Ruminations on the Intersection of Inner Space & Cyber Space

Richard Power looks beyond fear, doubt, and "broken" to cybersecurity's real connection to the evolving world.

For decades, cyber technologies brought forth from human genius have been radically transforming our society. Business, government, science and culture have changed swiftly and dramatically. Consequently, for decades, our collective psyche has been trying to work out its intense and complex relationship with these powerful cyber technologies. Just as Godzilla (1954), and its spin-offs, reflected the collective psyche's attempts to come to grips with grief over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and anxieties over the threat of global nuclear war; the human race's unconscious fears and doubts about cyberspace have been projected on to the big screen in numerous sci-fi epics, notably:

* 2001: Space Odyssey (1968): This Stanley Kubrick masterpiece explored the powerful themes of human evolution, artificial intelligence and the mysteries of time and space. Much of the narrative revolved around the psychotic breakdown experienced by the HAL 9000, the on-board computer, which turns on the astronauts who rely on it for their safety and survival.

* Blade Runner (1982): Set in 2019, against the backdrop of the teeming mega-slum of Los Angeles, specialist police detectives hunt down "replicants" (androids that are almost indistinguishable from humans) and "retires" them. Used as laborers on "off-world colonies," the replicants have rebelled, asserting their sentience and desiring freedom.

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For decades, cyber technologies brought forth from human genius have been radically transforming our society. Business, government, science and culture have changed swiftly and dramatically. Consequently, for decades, our collective psyche has been trying to work out its intense and complex relationship with these powerful cyber technologies. Just as Godzilla (1954), and its spin-offs, reflected the collective psyche's attempts to come to grips with grief over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and anxieties over the threat of global nuclear war; the human race's unconscious fears and doubts about cyberspace have been projected on to the big screen in numerous sci-fi epics, notably:

* 2001: Space Odyssey (1968): This Stanley Kubrick masterpiece explored the powerful themes of human evolution, artificial intelligence and the mysteries of time and space. Much of the narrative revolved around the psychotic breakdown experienced by the HAL 9000, the on-board computer, which turns on the astronauts who rely on it for their safety and survival.

* Blade Runner (1982): Set in 2019, against the backdrop of the teeming mega-slum of Los Angeles, specialist police detectives hunt down "replicants" (androids that are almost indistinguishable from humans) and "retires" them. Used as laborers on "off-world colonies," the replicants have rebelled, asserting their sentience and desiring freedom.

* War Games (1983): Thinking he has found a cool game, a juvenile hacker breaks into WOPR, a U.S. military supercomputer, which models the potential outcomes of nuclear war, and nearly starts World War III.

* The Terminator (1984): The first of a series of film chronicling the human resistance to the Skynet AI machine network, led by John Connor and his mother.

* The Matrix (1999): A trilogy of films about a future in which reality is supplanted with the Matrix, a virtual world created by AI machines that uses the human race as batteries, harnessing their body and electrical activity as an energy source.

Of course, the underlying morale of all these stories is that these technologies are not the source of danger, nor are they our salvation; the source of both the danger and the salvation lies within our own collective psyche.

In understanding cyber security, and influencing its future, the psychological and philosophical dimensions are as important as the technological dimension.

Several years ago, within the context of a series of articles co-authored with my friend and colleague Dario Forte for Computer Fraud and Security Journal, I did a retrospective on the evolution of cyber security from 2006 to 2008; the tale that revealed itself compelled me to entitle it "Ten Years in the Wilderness."

Recently, three years on, and glancing back at the subsequent cycle from 1999 to 2009, I have speaking in terms of a "Lost Decade."

By 1999, it was clear that we had serious problems on our hands, e.g., the vulnerability of critical infrastructure; and by 1999, we also had some momentum in the direction of dealing with some of these problems.