We live in an amazing world which would have seemed like science fiction just a few generations ago. When I was a child nobody would’ve believed we would be using credit cards to pay for our bills and we would be carrying telephones in our pocket. When I say telephone of course I’m talking about a cell phone which is actually a powerful computer. It is hard to believe even the computers which used to fill entire rooms were nowhere near as powerful as the cell phone I carry in my pocket right now. When you really give it some thought you have to wonder how far we will advance in the same amount of time which we did from the 1950s to now. Let’s round it off and call it sixty-five years. In these sixty-five years we have gone to the moon more than once, sent probes out to other planets, discovered planets in other star systems, created cars that drive themselves, use virtual reality and even read peoples brains, among other things.

Scientists and engineers are already talking about replacing the cell phone with some type of device which would allow us to communicate using thought. I have to admit this is all beyond on me, but I am an old timer who has been lucky enough to be able to keep up with much of the technology today, unlike others I know. All this technology has created not only hope, but a lot of worry. The hope is we will be able to somehow neutralize nuclear weapons and prevent a nuclear war. We haven’t got there yet, but I imagine scientists all over the world are probably working on this problem as I speak. The worry is there are a lot of crazy people out there who want to use a nuclear weapon. Nuclear weapons are probably the worst thing we have ever invented, because there is no way to actually stop any country from building them. Not every leader of every country who possesses nuclear weapons believes the same way as most of us. Some seem to believe they would be doing God’s work by launching a nuclear attack. Some of them actually said they don’t care if they die, because they are going to paradise.

There are many other worries besides nuclear war and one of them seems to have been demonstrated just a day or two ago. As I am writing this article Peapod the grocery people who take orders online have had their website down for at least two days. I can’t be sure, but it does seem like some sort of an attack. One can only imagine how much money this is costing them as they try and repair this website. Websites are being attacked constantly and some groups have made a business of doing this so they can steal important information about customers. Sometimes it is easier to attack a website of this type than trying to attack a bank website, because banks are applying more and more security to their sites, where a food website might not be as well protected. I don’t know if Peapod was attacked or it just went down for some other reason, but when I saw it was down for a couple of days my spider sense went off.

One of the problems we have is there is much more to attack in the United States and Europe when it comes to websites which have customer’s data. It was much harder in the old days to steal customer data, because you had to do it manually. What I mean is if you wanted to steal someone’s checking account number you would have to get it off of one of their checks somehow or stand in the bank trying to recoup a piece of carbon paper which they used to make a duplicate check. This limited the amount of stolen funds tremendously when we compare it to what is going on today. So far I have only talked about stealing data and funds from people, but there is so much more criminals can do and unfortunately it is because so many things are connected to the Internet. One of the biggest worries right now, which is not a financial worry is will someone take over the controls on our car while we are driving. This has been demonstrated quite a few times already by people doing it to show it could be done. One might ask why would anyone want to do this and if they did they would see there are a few reasons. One might be assassination. Taking over a car at high speed and crashing it is one way to kill somebody. Another reason could be as simple as a kid doing it for fun. Then there are the military reasons where trucks, cars, drones and even tanks are being used and the enemy is able to hack into them and use them against the people who are deploying them.

Some scientists believe we are on the verge of perfecting a quantum computer and when we do, it will enable us to create codes which cannot be broken, thus protecting us from these kind of attacks. You have to realize people have been saying this for hundreds of years. Not that they’re creating quantum computers, but they are creating codes that can’t be broken. I think the truth is whatever code is created can be broken and if it is created with a quantum computer, eventually a quantum computer will break it. I know I will probably get a lot of arguments on this one. Who is to say a quantum computer will be the most advanced computer there is? Eventually we may develop other types of computers which are even more powerful.

I’ve said this many times, but until the world gets together on treaties which will punish people who are breaking into website, no matter what country they are doing it from, we will always have a problem. There are some countries which just don’t care, because they have nothing to lose. This is shortsighted, because eventually they will catch up to the rest of the world. Another big worry is brain hacking. It has been shown one human brain can control another if it is hooked up to it, of course this is with wires and to a machine, but now that we know how to do it, it’s only a matter of time before we will be able to do it without wires and then we are all in trouble. So you see, even with all the wonders around us there is still a dark side we have to deal with.