TRUSTING YOUR LIFE TO A STRANGER
Re-posted 10 July 2009
Dear Friends and Futurists:
A headline from the NEW YORK TIMES:
Breaking News Alert
The New York Times
Wednesday, July 8, 2009 -- 12:39 AM ET-----
Google Plans to Introduce a PC Operating System
"In a direct challenge to Microsoft, Google is expected to announce on Wednesday that it is developing an operating system for a personal computer based on its Chrome browser, according to two people briefed on Google's plans. The move would sharpen the already intense competition between Google and Microsoft, whose Windows operating system controls the basic functions of the vast majority of personal computers."
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COMMENTARY - PART 1: The Extremely Frightening Scenario
Microsoft's operating system has made Bill Gate's one of the world's wealthiest monopolists, and has given Microsoft access to incredible amounts of data (public, private and highly classified), as well as control of the functioning of the majority of the world's communications, analytic and automated systems and facilities. Think of some of the potential abuses of this vast power:
1. Access to all of your banked money and securities, and everyone else's.
2. Access to all of your secured facilities (door locks, bank vaults, power plants, government military installations and nuclear facilities).
3. Access to anything (all information) put into any email, computer file, or scanned file.
Google has a similar power over our lives.
Either of these two goliaths could have most of the world at its mercy. And now, they are openly at war. When you think about the implications of this, do you ever imagine yourself as a skinny, loincloth-clad dolt with his legs chained together cuaght in the middle of a tusk battle between two wooly mammoths? I do. I even become claustrophobic.
Either one of these companies has the ability to collapse an economy, trigger a war, and much, much worse. This goes well beyond the Forbin Project. This goes well beyond Absolute Power. As a matter of fact, either of these companies has the ability to terminate Human existence as we have come to know it -- they are bigger than any governments -- they are wired right into governments. We, as Human Beings, are fully at their mercy. We cannot police or regulate entities which are so much more powerful than ourselves and our greatest institutions. We can either trust their organizational morality, or we can distrust and fear them...waiting for the day when they choose to openly declare their reign over our species.
Each of these two juggernauts would like to engulf and devour (or obliterate) the other. As engaged adversaries, they are already formidable to the civilian population...as a combined entity produced by a politically-expedient marriage of oligarchs, they may well be more so. Either company has, at present, sufficient available cash to purchase virtually every small or large (but unprofitable) communications innovator (i.e., Twitter, YouTube, etc.) which has an important position of utility in the marketplace. Feedburner, the largest and best-known RSS feedcaster in the growing blogosphere is now owned by Blogger -- which, in turn, is owned by Google. These types of transactions are textbook cases in vertical integration.
The potential conflicts of interest in this domination are also very frightening. Microsoft's operating system has all but squeezed out all other prospective players in the PC marketplace by coercing companies to use its operating system or suffer the "consequences" of not being able to offer other vital capabilities and programs; Google is the world's best-known search engine, but markets its own products...you can speak about search engine ranking algorithms until your fuses blow out, but pedestrian common sense would lead a rational person (or even some of my closest friends) to the conclusion that Google might give its own profit-makers higher rankings. For all I know, having Google rank or rate sites might be every bit as sensible as having a sixth-grader mark his own test paper, or having an active alcoholic in charge of tending bar or maintaining the accounting records relating to the wine and liquor inventory.
Plainly speaking, we are entrusting our lives to a very small number of organizations that might put their own profitability and power ahead of our consumer satisfaction experience. Power does have the proven potential to corrupt, or at very least, to tempt even the righteous.
What can any person or organization do to stop this domination and its potential abuses? Absolutely nothing. Anti-trust lawsuits and other prosecution or regulation tactics and strategies are about as effective as trying to make an unarmed citizen's arrest of a machine gun-toting terrorist on methamphetamine. [Yes, yes...I know...the metaphors are abominable but I am getting my meaning across]. A prudent Futurist would do well to accept their domination as reality and predict and prepare for their actions. Expecting a moral prerogative or a government agency to come to the rescue is (oh, no -- not another metaphor....or is this one more of an allusion?) is tilting at windmills.
The most frightening components of this nightmare scenario are if:
- One or both of the companies decide to get more aggressively involved in lobbying and kingmaking in government;
- One or both of the companies experiences a significant "glitch," and the systems that our tenuous civilization and infrastructure cease to operate properly - the results would be immediate and calamitous;
- Any one of a number of rogue or disgruntled programmers at either of the companies decides to inflict damage upon the masses by creating or launching a formidable computer virus or worm. These bright young minds have the demonstrated ability to destroy as well as create. There are some of their number who might enjoy the rush of adrenalin associated with hacking into or otherwise corrupting some major programs which operate almost every aspect of our lives...from traffic lights and commerce, to nuclear power plants and the entire national defense system. It is amazing to think that so many young, brilliant and virtually unsupervised staffers have immediate, unimpeded and unquestioned access to potential weapons of mass destruction. The push of the right button at the right moment can turn the lights out all over the grid. On that note, here is just a small sample of this incalculably damaging potential at play:
Click on: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090708/ap_on_go_ot/us_cyber_attack . This article appears courtesy of Associated Press (AP), and is titled, "Federal Web sites knocked out by cyber attack." The incident was reported on July 8th. As noted earlier, this is just one small sample.
I personally think that the realistic threat of a devastating cyber-attack poses a far more clear and present danger than that of: nuclear war caused by either sovereign nations or fanatical fringe groups; major civil unrest (an oxymoron, there), Global Warming, Massive Climatic Change, or poisoning of food or water supplies. Stringent emissions standards, better banking oversight and gun control legislation won't make an iota of difference. If you'd like to start an interesting discussion at a party attended by heads of state and senior military officials, just innocently ask them something along the lines of, "Hey guys! I'm curious. Do you folks have redundant computer systems hosted and managed by several unrelated vendors...I mean, like, a 'backup system'?" The things that we count upon, the things which we depend upon...these are our greatest areas of vulnerability.
COMMENTARY - PART 2: What We Might ExpectThere is wisdom in being prepared to address those things which we cannot change. Hence this whole business of trend-spotting and extrapolating, and its natural application to the these goliaths with virtually limitless power. Let's anticipate what they might be likely to do, and what me might be able to do, either in preparation or in response, to use this knowledge to our advantage.
1. THE SOLO INTEGRATION PLAY. In 2002, eBay bought PayPal (a merchant payment processing system, ideal for ecommerce) for the sum of $1.5 Billion. It is indeed a meaningful marriage, giving eBay customers an immediate means of being able to settle their sales and purchases. Since eBay is a publicly-traded entity, with its stock held by a large number of individual shareholders, eBay's gain is its shareholders' gain -- many shareholders use eBay's services, as well. The whole scenario looks rather like a cooperative or a credit union, but without any real banking being involved.
With so many financial institutions in tenuous financial straits, there may well be an opportunity for Google and Microsoft to get into a) more of the merchant payment processing business, and b) some serious aspects of the retail banking business. As an increasing volume of all business is transacted via internet, it makes a good deal of sense for this market to be further harvested for financing. This could most efficiently be accomplished from the standpoints of both regulatory compliance and logistics by having some of the existing financial institutions provide the "backoffice" functions for these giants. Ironically, these backoffice functions are all computerized and invariably involve, well...Microsoft! A silly analogy: Computers and banking are like chicldren and loaded guns.
2. THE CLASH OF THE TITANS PLAY. In this scenario, Google unsettles Microsoft by hitting it where it hurts most...in its operating system. Google provides a great deal of consumer communications services, a great deal of value-added innovation, and has a greater cross-section of the consumer marketplace (because of the dependence upon its many services) than does Microsoft. Google is perceived as more innovative, more consumer-friendly, and more customer interactive than Microsoft, which is dominated by the personal presence of Bill Gates and a seemingly endless string of bad "upgrades" -- can you smell them? Vista, Internet Explorer 8...all of which are beta-tested on the public. Google appears to be more receptive to feedback from the marketplace - from its core consumers. In a battle to the death, and barring a business combination of the two companies, Google will outmaneuver Microsoft, to the cheers of the public (and of Steve Jobs, jumping about gleefullyover at Apple).
3. THE TO EACH ITS OWN PLAY. It is possible that Google will simply become more of a social media services provider, and Microsoft will become an increasingly operations-oriented company (like the IBM of old, but more progressive). It is possible that Microsoft will creep into the financial services industry, while Google keeps polishing its Chrome. Let's not forget that Microsoft's operating system is very deeply embedded into the marketplace -- like a heartworm in your favorite pooch. In this, the most optimistic scenario, we will still be ruled by two giants. And there are numerous individuals within each of these monoliths who have the capability of doing incredible damage on a whim -- simply and quickly. No guns, plutonium, carbon monoxide, melamine, or vial of Andromeda Strain required.
I have taken the step of backing up this article after writing each paragraph. I feel vulnerable to a loss of hours upon hours of hard work due to an unexpected computer glitch. It has happened to me before. At least when the lights go out in a storm, we have an emergency generator.
Faithfully,
Douglas Castle
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AFTER THE ORIGINAL RELEASE OF THIS POST (Added 7/11/09):
ALTERNATIVE TITLE: DEPENDENCIES, TRUST and VULNERABILITY
Futurists: What is the greatest actual threat to civilization? Are we taking too much for granted?http://twitlik.com/GOOGLESOFT #TNNW -DC
Reference terms: google, microsoft, dependencies, trust, vulnerability, monopoly, power, Blogs by Douglas Castle, merchant payment processing services, finance and banking, vertical integration, The National Networker, SrMeetUp, Internal Energy Plus, clear and present danger, destruction potential, command, regulation, domination, #TNNW, #TNNW_BUZZWORKS, #SrMeetUp, #Braintenance, indolence, inertia, behavioral psychology, search engines, data mining, redundant systems, antitrust regulations, media controls, operating systems...abuses of power, acquisitions, Douglas Castle blogs, Feedburner, google, industry domination, mergers, microsoft, monopolies, search engines, YouTube
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