Summary: Another in this series debunking hysteria about the many threats to our world. One of America’s great polymaths, Andrew Odlyzko, looks at cyber threats – cutting though the self-interested propaganda of experts to see the truth. We have to learn to see threats more clearly if we hope to survive the 21st century.
Excerpts from “Cybersecurity is not very important.“
By Andrew Odlyzko in the Ubiquity, June 2019.
There is a rising tide of security breaches. There is an even faster rising tide of hysteria over the ostensible reason for these breaches, namely the deficient state of our information infrastructure. Yet the world is doing remarkably well overall, and has not suffered any of the oft-threatened giant digital catastrophes.
This continuing general progress of society suggests that cyber security is not very important. Adaptations to cyberspace of techniques that worked to protect the traditional physical world have been the main means of mitigating the problems that occurred. This “chewing gum and baling wire” approach is likely to continue to be the basic method of handling problems that arise, and will provide…
