{"id":55026,"date":"2015-07-09T10:51:39","date_gmt":"2015-07-09T02:51:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=55026"},"modified":"2015-07-09T22:07:35","modified_gmt":"2015-07-09T14:07:35","slug":"deepening-dependency-on-technology-raises-risk-of-breakdowns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/07\/09\/deepening-dependency-on-technology-raises-risk-of-breakdowns\/","title":{"rendered":"Deepening dependency on technology raises risk of breakdowns"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>
Photo courtesy of Flickr\/Laia Ros)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

SAN FRANCISCO \u2013 When technology breaks down now, people’s lives go haywire, too.<\/p>\n

Wednesday\u2019s confounding confluence of computer outages at United Airlines, the New York Stock Exchange and The Wall Street Journal delivered a jolting reminder about our deepening dependence on interconnected networks to get through each day.<\/p>\n

For the most part, technology has worked smoothly while hatching innovations and conveniences that have made our lives easier and our jobs more productive. Computers, though, could bring more frequent headaches as they link together with billions of other electronic devices and household appliances- a phenomenon that has become known as the \u201cInternet of things.\u201d<\/p>\n

This technological daisy chain will increase the complexity of the systems and raise the risks of massive breakdowns, either through an inadvertent glitch or a malicious attack.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem is humans can\u2019t keep up with all the technology they have created,\u201d said Avivah Litan, an analyst at Gartner. \u201cIt\u2019s becoming unmanageable by the human brain. Our best hope may be that computers eventually will become smart enough to maintain themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Technology already is controlling critical systems such as airline routes, electricity grids, financial markets, military weapons, commuter trains, street traffic lights and our lines of communications.<\/p>\n

Now, computers are taking other aspects of our lives as we depend on smartphones to wake us up in the morning before an app turns on the coffee pot in the kitchen for a caffeine fix that can be enjoyed in a the comfort of a home kept at an ideal temperature by an Internet-connected thermostat designed to learn the occupant’s preferences.<\/p>\n

Within the next few years, we may even be unlocking our doors with high-tech watches after being chauffeured home in robotic cars.<\/p>\n

Technology\u2019s relentless march demands better security measures to prevent hackers from breaking into system and more rigid programming standards to reduce the chances of crippling outages, said Lillian Ablon, a technology researcher for the Rand Corp.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of just letting the technology rush ahead of us and then trying to catch up in terms of privacy and security, we should be baking those things into the systems from the start,\u201d she said. \u201cWe need to be a little smarter on how we are coding things.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sequence of Wednesday’s outages appears to have been a fluke. Sabotage isn\u2019t suspected, FBI Director James Comey said during an appearance before Congress.<\/p>\n

But a domino effect may have contributed to The Wall Street Journal\u2019s outage. Comey believes the newspaper\u2019s website buckled after the New York Stock Exchange\u2019s problems caused alarmed investors looking for information to swamp the Journal’s website.<\/p>\n

The length of Wednesday\u2019s outages also is disconcerting, Gartner\u2019s Litan said.<\/p>\n

It took the New York Stock Exchange more than three-and-half hours to resume trading, slowing Wall Street’s usually furious pace. A \u201crouter issue\u201d at United Airlines grounded its plane\u2019s for nearly two hours, leading to 800 flight delays and 60 cancellations.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone needs to assume technology is going to go down sometimes, but you should be resilient enough to quickly recover from the outage within a half hour, if not a few minutes,\u201d Litan said.<\/p>\n

Wednesday\u2019s breakdowns were minor inconveniences compared to what might happen if better security measures aren’t imposed to keep out intruders bent on wreaking havoc, said Jeff Williams, chief technology officer for Contrast Security.<\/p>\n

Too often, the technology industry’s focus is on creating something cool and worrying about security later, Williams said. He said the lackadaisical attitude breeds a mindset like this: \u201cOh, we\u2019ll just put your blender on the Internet, there are no security issues there. And hackers figure out a way to turn on your blender in the middle of the night and set your house fire.\u201d<\/p>\n

Computers may get smarter through a combination of better programming, machine learning and more sophisticated chips. If computers can reach the still far-off goal of becoming artificially intelligent, they could be better equipped to prevent problems and fend off unauthorized users. Self-reliant and self-aware computers would still confront humans with a scary question, Litan said: \u201cAre the computers going to be nice to us or are they going to take us out?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SAN FRANCISCO \u2013 When technology breaks down now, people’s lives go haywire, too. Wednesday\u2019s confounding confluence of computer outages at …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":55028,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-55026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-original","mauthors-michael-liedtke","mauthors-barbara-ortutay","mauthors-the-associated-press1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}