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Tag Archive for Kimberly Unger

The very fine line

April 27, 2015 future, Writing Comments Off on The very fine line

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150420/05585630727/fbi-united-airlines-shoot-messenger-after-security-researcher-discovers-vulnerabilities-airplane-computer-system.shtml

The above caught my attention the other day, in part because I have an ongoing fascination with transitional spaces.  Those grey areas which aren’t quite “good guy” and not quite “bad guy”.  Most of the ones I encounter are legal grey spaces (rather than moral ones).  A law or a rule has been placed in place that is ignored if the rulebreaker is working for the greater good, and enforced when the rulebreaker is operating with malicious intent.  Needless to say, this kind of inconsistent enforcement can become a problem, especially if clear secondary boundaries are not set.

Take (as a similar example) the bounties that companies like MSFT and Facebook place on finding security holes in their software.  There are potential criminal penalties for finding and exploiting these holes, but if you find one and are the first one to report it (I’m over simplifying here, I’m aware) there is often a bounty awarded.  In both cases, the act of hacking the software is technically illegal (again, oversimplifying), but the company chooses to reward one instance and persecute another (which makes sense, right?  One hack is by a good-guy, helping to make the software more secure, the other is the bad guy, exploiting the hack for personal gain).

But because of these inconsistencies, the laws get hard to enforce.  Law enforcement and the corporate interests may not align.  Hackers and crackers may switch hats with regularity, working on “white hat” projects and “black hat” projects simultaneously or in turn, depending where their interests lie and because of this, law enforcement tends to regard most (if not all) of them with equal suspicion, leading to incidents like the one above.

 

Space Exploration has Two Camps

April 23, 2015 future, Writing Comments Off on Space Exploration has Two Camps

 

http://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-s-messenger-spacecraft-will-soon-crash-into-the-surface-of-mercury?perpetual=yes&limitstart=1

 Are a rule, humanity is pretty d*mn stubborn.  If we want to do a thing, we do a thing.  If we don’t want to do a thing, we don’t do a thing.  There are a ton of “reasons” we might do or not do, ranging from corporate greed to altruistic intentions and higher-order awareness down to plain “I donwanna”.

So in hand, right now, in everyday life, we have what seem to be two primary camps for space exploration.

Number One is the Meat Plan.  The Big Sexxy, right?  Strap a rocket to the back of a test pilot and fire them off into the great unknown.  WOOOOOOOHOOOOOO!  Take THAT Universe!  It’s a fabulous vision, and there is some logic to it.  People are useful.  We can do many many things given enough time and materials, so sending humans + materials (or at least instructions) does make some sense (outside of the potential death/madness thing).  BUT it is infinitely harder to do because people die and rockets explode.

BUT, Plan Two is Robots all the way down.  Remotely Operated Vehicles, Rovers, Probes, essentially they are all extensions of humanity, just without the meat part.  Human designed, human built, while they are not as adaptable, they don’t die quite the same way as we do, they are easier to power, easier to support emotionally (just don’t look at their Twitter feeds), and they are the current functional plan.  Since they are designed by humans they are, as our ambassadors, going to reflect human preconceptions and frailties.

My humble opinion is that both plans are going to work.  The “Meat” plan is going to take longer and be harder to execute.  The “Robot” plan is already underway.  But once we get the technologies and developments from BOTH plans working together?  Watch out Universe.  Here we come….

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