Why the Internet Is Less Safe Than Flying or Driving or Eating: A Conversation with Bruce Schneier

The metaverse notwithstanding, the nexus between what happens on the internet, and what happens in the real, physical world, is disappearing. The blood-brain barrier between the two has broken. And every day, in our finances, in our interpersonal communications, in our entertainment, in our transportation, and even in what we eat, the connection between our digital world and our real world is further integrated.

Reactions to this vary from, “I’m terrified of everything; the government should control the internet,” to, “There is no privacy; do I have nothing to hide; and why should I care if I’m being served up greater convenience?” The fact is that vast sums of data on all of us are being collected, sometimes in the name of convenience, sometimes in the name of national security, and it’s unclear exactly what’s going on. It’s unclear where security theater starts, and real security begins.

In short, the cyber world presents 21st-century problems that have not yet been solved, much less, fully understood. We talk about that today with my guest, Bruce Schneier,  a public interest technologist working at the intersection of security, technology, and people. 

My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Bruce Schneier:

The History of our Future: A Conversation with Former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler

We’ve talked before about those frightening four words heard all too often. “This time it’s different.” Perhaps, besides Wall Street, nowhere else is that said as much as in Silicon Valley and the among the purveyors of every aspect of today technological and digital revolution.

No question that today is different. But it also fits into a pattern of human invention that has been a part of our evolutionary biology. It’s built around our curiosity, and the need to connect and share stories and information.

In examining this, it appears that there have been several inflection points along the way. Former FCC commissioner Tom Wheeler argues in his new book, that they are Gutenberg and the invention of movable type, and the telegraph. Both of which were every bit as profound as today's insanely great products.

To take us both back and forward on this journey I’m joined by former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. to talk about From Gutenberg to Google: The History of Our Future.

My conversation with Tom Wheeler:


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With Each New Year, Do We Loose A Little of What Makes Us Human?

How much of your work day is about emails, texts, Slack, Basecamp or Shift? And how much is about phone calls or meetings or basic human contact? If you’re like most people today, a large portion is devoted to apps, to screens, and to technology. And less and less to human contact.

How many times have you sent a work text or email to someone yards or even feet away? How many Holiday texts or emails did you send, rather than make a phone call, or a date for coffee? All of this comes with a price. It disconnects us over and over again so that we begin to lose the basic skills of human contact and interaction.

According to Dan Schawbel, the price we pay is not just in the workplace but in the very act of being human. Schawbel writes about this in Back to Human: How Great Leaders Create Connection in the Age of Isolation.

My conversation with Dan Schawbel:

Silicon Opioids

We check our phones hundreds of times a day. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram images fly by, as were always afraid we’ll miss something “important.” Snap, a company losing tens of millions of dollar a year, is suddenly worth over twenty billion dollars.  It’s betting on our obsession with seeing what others are doing.

Curiosity, envy or addiction? Every generation has its addictions. The invention of radio, television, the long playing record, the walkman, Pac Man, all had their day and their fans. But is there something different, something more addictive about our modern technology?

These are some of the questions asked by Adam Alter, an Associate Professor of Marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business, in his book Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked.

My conversation with Adam Alter:

The Future is Inevitable

If there is one overriding meme today it’s about fear. Fear of change, fear of a shrinking world, fear of the impact of technology; in short fear of an unknown future. Regardless of that fear, the future is inevitable. It’s the place we are all going to be living.

Even for those that are afraid to embrace it, they should at least understand it. Few see the future more clearly and are better able to explain it than WIRED founder Kevin Kelly. He lays out the agenda for future in The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future.

My conversation with Kevin Kelly:

Why is the technology to simplify our lives, so complicated?

We’ve been told for years that one of the key goals of technology was to simplify our life. In fact, for many people the opposite has happened. The combination of complexity, feature creep, and the ever updating world of new technology has made the complexity of the process sometimes not worth the effort.

Enter David Pogue. He spent thirteen years writing about personal technology for the NY Times. He launched Yahoo Tech. He writes a monthly column for Scientific America and created the Missing Manual computer book series. He’s won two Emmys, two Webby awards, and a Loeb award for journalism.

But most of all he is the undisputed master of how to harness the best of technology to serve us and not the other way around. He does it in a way that is both useful and humorous in his new book Pogue's Basics: Essential Tips and Shortcuts (That No One Bothers to Tell You) for Simplifying the Technology in Your Life.

My conversation with David Pogue:

The Internet is Not the Answer

The industrial revolution changed the world. It changed the nature of work, it displaced workers, it ushered in the Gilded Age and created more inequality. It shrank the world, drove consumerism, and reshaped political ideology.

The Internet revolution, 150 years later, has had startling similar effects. We worship at the altar of creative destruction, we fetishize technology and the freedom and democratization that the Internet had promised. But at what price?

Simply, can the same technology and companies that fractured and reshaped the world, now be what we need to put it back together again?

Andrew Keen, argues that The Internet Is Not the Answer.

My conversation with Andrew Keen:

Understanding the Internet of Things

Although the origins of the quote are a bit murky, the idea that the only way to predict the future is to invent it, certainly seems true in the 21st century. In fact, that future is being invented right now.

As technology moves from dedicated devices, to virtually everything, soon everything from our pens to our trash to our kitchens to our most intimate desires, will be connected to the each other and to us, in ways unimagined until now. Will that technology be more humane or more intrusive?

David Rose is on the cutting edge of inventing that future and he details it in Enchanted Objects: Design, Human Desire, and the Internet of Things.

My conversation with David Rose:

How innovation keeps proving the catastrophists wrong!

Throughout time there have always been those trying to stop the forces of progress. Fear of the new and fear of technology, has been the stuff of both horror and science fiction and of many dystopian visions of the future.

Today, too often in the name of good stewardship of our plant, there are those that believe we need a simpler world. One where we go back to the land, to the farm, to a kind of Thoreau like localism. The fact is the world is moving toward cities, technological progress is a force of nature that cannot be stopped and globalization is a genie that will not be put back into the proverbial bottle.

So how do we accept all of this, and still see a future that is livable, sustainable, and provides for our needs and still protects our food, our air, our water and our climate? The answer lies in technology  and in innovation that is, as Robert Bryce says, Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper.

My conversation with Robert Bryce:

iDoc

We look to technology as the panacea to solve so many of today's problems. Yet we fear technology. When it goes wrong, like stealing our credit card information, or not allowing easy access to a government website, we get angry. Clearly, our emotional nexus with technology is out of balance with our intellectual understanding of it. The price we pay is fear, alienation, confusion and a degree of appropriate paranoia.

Few understand this better than bestselling novelist Dr. Robin Cook. He has used this imbalance to scare the bejesus out of us in his books like Coma, Cure, and Fever. Now in his latest work, Cell, he once again walks us through the cost benefit analysis of medical technology falling into the wrong hands.

My conversation with Robin Cook:

The Distraction Addiction

Throughout history we have always looked at technology as a tool to make life easier. Whether it was a wheel, a shovel, a pencil or today, our smartphones. Our current technology was in many ways designed and sold to make us more creative. Instead, in many ways it has made us more fractured and distracted. But the fault is not in the zeros and ones, but in ourselves.

Dr. Alex Pang, a futurist and thought leader in the field of contemplative computing, believes we have the power to change our relationship to our technology. He’s written about it in The Distraction Addiction: Getting the Information You Need and the Communication You Want, Without Enraging Your Family, Annoying Your Colleagues, and Destroying Your Soul.

My conversation with Alex Pang: