The CyberSecurity Connection
Thirty years ago, James Burke made a highly acclaimed television series on the impact of technology on our lives and the factors that brought that technology into being. Watching Connections at 12 made me realize that engineering was more than just a job, it was a career that could have an impact on society that was more direct and longer lasting than politics.
Rewatching the opening of Connections is disconcerting for many reasons. What passed for high technology in 1978 looks distinctly anachronistic to modern eyes. And one of the vignettes in the opening sequence shows a passenger on an airplane extinguishing a cigarette as a normal preparation for landing. Nobody is carrying an iPod of course, but there are no Sony Walkmans either, that did not appear until 1979.
Technology has moved on apace since, but Burke's central theme in his opening episode is the extent to which whe have become dependent on modern technology. If we were dependent in 1978, how much more dependent are we today?
In the rest of the program Burke demonstrates that we have been dependent on technology for survival for the past 5000 years or so. But that does not change the fact that many of the systems we depend on today are considerably more fragile than 30 years ago. Burke uses an elevator to illustrate the complex technology behind an apparently simple press of a button. As Burke rises to the 110th floor we see levers, pulleys and relays springing to action. Given time and a small number of simple tools, I could fix that system if it broke down. Today the control system would be integrated circuits that must be replaced rather than repaired.
But the most disconcerting aspect of the program is that Burke uses New York City to ilustrate his point and in 1978 the obvious place to view New York City was the top of the World Trade Center.
Not only do we have a critical reliance on a fragile infrastructure, we have people whose objective is to attack it.
