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worth repeating |
Hermann Maurer, dean of the computer science faculty at Graz University of Technology in Austria, was on campus last week. The topic of his talk was “Can We Avoid Catastrophic Failures of Computer Networks?” Some excerpts: “Our society is very deeply networked to an incredible—and a little bit scary—degree. We cannot live on our own any more. We are not really regional beings any more. We are small cog wheels in a very complex undertaking and this undertaking has the name ‘humankind.’ … “If you look at computers and computerization, information technology is certainly supporting this phenomena. I mean after all, on-time production and all these delivery schedules can all be met because of computers.… “Now globalization has many advantages no doubt but it also creates dangerous dependencies.… “Could it really happen that computers and computer networks break down in large regions for prolonged periods? The answer, unfortunately, is yes. The danger is particularly high if you have targeted attacks. We have not seen serious targeted attacks yet, the only attacks of computer networks or viruses that you have seen have been produced by individual hackers. But if you give a well-trained group somewhere in the world $100 million and you say on Sept. 11, 2008, all the computers in the rest of the world are supposed to stand still, they will stand still.… “To avoid catastrophic breakdown of computer networks, we need to 1) increase the stability of the networks; 2) use globalization where necessary but regionalization where reasonable; and 3) reduce terrorism by reducing inequality in the world. One way to accomplish this is by helping Third World countries become more proficient with information technology.” |
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—Juliett Dinkins |
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