Imagine a net. The nodes are the points of connection, the links are the rope between. A route is defined as any path from one node to another node. As long as the net is interconnected enough, a failure at one node only minimally impacts the route. A break in the link means that connection is served, but other connections can take over. In a well-distributed net, a failure at one point has little consequences.
But networks have vulnerabilities as well. Stresses on one node are spread throughout the network, distorting connections. A weak connection potentially weakens the ones around it. If the whole network is near the breaking point, a failure in one place can put enough stress on its neighbors so that they will fail, which puts stress on their neighbors and they fail, etc.
As networks (and by this, I mean the ways in which people connect to each other) proliferate, network effects become magnified. Just as an idea can spread like wildfire from person to person, faster now than ever before, so too can a catastrophic event which would previously be limited to one geographical area or interconnected group, affect entire regions. Think of an ice storm in Quebec knocking out power to the enitre Northeast. So what can we do to mitigate the interconnected destructive potential of networks while preserving their benefits?
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Friday, February 1, 2013
The War In The Ether
There is a war going on. This is of course not news - humanity has been in a near-constant state of conflict since there has been humanity. But this war is different.
There are no bombs, no bullets, and no bandages. There are nation-states and militaries fighting this war, and there are cypherpunks and black-hats fighting this war. We see rumblings from time-to-time: the Red October network, Wikileaks, the recent hacks at the New York Times. The weapons of this war have strange names and are peristent, like NBC weapons: Mahdi, Stuxnet, Flame, LOIC.
There are deaths, too. Aaron Swartz was one.
The war is for information. Who has it, who wants it, who controls the flow of information. By controlling information, you can control how other people make decisions, how they think, what they can make happen. This has been a fundamental feature of war as well - spycraft, deception, intel. But now conflict appears on a platform of pure information, the weapons made of bits and bytes, the soldiers working from computers spread out across the globe.
The future isn't coming - it is already here.
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
There are no bombs, no bullets, and no bandages. There are nation-states and militaries fighting this war, and there are cypherpunks and black-hats fighting this war. We see rumblings from time-to-time: the Red October network, Wikileaks, the recent hacks at the New York Times. The weapons of this war have strange names and are peristent, like NBC weapons: Mahdi, Stuxnet, Flame, LOIC.
There are deaths, too. Aaron Swartz was one.
The war is for information. Who has it, who wants it, who controls the flow of information. By controlling information, you can control how other people make decisions, how they think, what they can make happen. This has been a fundamental feature of war as well - spycraft, deception, intel. But now conflict appears on a platform of pure information, the weapons made of bits and bytes, the soldiers working from computers spread out across the globe.
The future isn't coming - it is already here.
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
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