The Wonders Of Our Time
One has to look at the world we live in and realize it is just full of wonders and many of these wonders have to do in one way or another with computers. Computers are responsible for almost every device we have around us. When I was young the things we have today were only written about, they were the stuff of science fiction. People were still reading “From the Earth to the Moon” by Jules Verne and still being amazed. I don’t believe anyone in those days would have thought we would have landed on the moon in their lifetime and yet here we are today, 47 years after we successfully accomplished that task. It certainly didn’t have the dramatic effect on our society that everyone thought it would, because people were predicting that once we did land on the moon, we would be heading for the planets in our solar system, which we never did. I am not talking about sending probes, I am talking about manned missions. One of the biggest disappointments to many of us was the fact we stopped manned missions after only a few moon landings.
Getting back to computers, one of the greatest social changes in the history of the world has been the invention of the Internet. It has far more of an effect on our society than anything we’ve done in the space program. If you told people years ago that they could converse with anyone in the world instantly and could do it for free, they would have laughed at you. One of the most expensive things in the old days was making a transatlantic call on the phone. You could easily spend a week’s salary on one call which only lasted a few minutes. The change in the area of communications has been incredible. We are now sharing ideas with people from all over the planet and have a much better idea of how they live. Admittedly some of these ideas harm us, but most of them can be used to our benefit. I think it is safe to say that all of us have a much better idea of what it is to be a citizen of different foreign countries than we ever had years ago. Along with this we also have a better idea of other things.
Right now we seem to be middle of a peaceful revolution. That revolution has to do with oil and all the products make from it. One does not have to be a prophet to see that the age of oil and coal as a fuel source is coming to an end, some countries have already done away with either completely or substantially as a source of heat and a source of power for factories. When we talk about renewable energy we usually don’t think that it was a source of power for ancient people, but it certainly was. Many of the ancient races used waterpower to turn wheels and such and these wheels did things like grinding their flour. Today we use water a little differently, but we still use it as a power source, only this time it turns huge turbines which generate electricity. The top five countries as of 2014 that produced the most terawatt hours of electricity per year were China, the United States, Brazil, Canada and Russia. This is not to say they had the highest percentage of all their energy produced from renewable sources. In 2015 a survey was made of countries using renewable energy and here are the results, Denmark set a record for power from wind generation getting over 39% of all of its electricity from the wind. The United Kingdom was able to up their renewable energy from the wind to 15%. Germany increased the electrical generation from renewable sources to almost 26%. In Scotland 98% of all households were receiving electricity created by wind generators.
It seems that every time a new invention comes along the idea behind it is to make our lives easier and safer even if it doesn’t always turn out that way. Our cars are beginning to turn into automated capsules which have every convenience and will soon be capable of driving themselves to any destination. This has all been made possible by computers which are taking over all of the automobile’s functions. There is one thing that has been a disappointment however and that is something that has been talked about for the last 100 years, but has never come to pass. I am talking about the flying car. From time to time we read about it being developed, but it never seems to come to pass. First of all it would be a lot more expensive to have a flying car than a regular car. The second problem is it would now be considered an airplane and be subject to all the rules which guide aircraft. First thing this might mean is that the flying car would need far more electronics and gauges. The second thing is it would be restricted to certain corridors in the air and would need permissions for certain actions. It just doesn’t seem practical yet, because of these restrictions.
When we talk about all of these advances we have to realize that many good things have a dark side. Unfortunately computing and the Internet also do. First of all human nature is such that there will always be people who will see anything we do which is connected to computers as a challenge to them to be able to somehow get into the code and change the system. This also applies to countries who for different reasons would want to use the Internet as a weapon and get into such things as a country’s utilities so they could shut them down in wartime or do it as a terrorist attack or for some other unknown reason, perhaps maybe even to influence the stock market. Any device which is connected to a communications device of any sort is vulnerable to attack. Years ago the US military thought that their nuclear codes was so well protected no one could ever break into them, but a professional computer analyst challenged them. With their permission he locked himself in a hotel room for three days with only an Apple computer and by the end of the third day he had gotten into our nuclear codes sending shock waves through the military.
Nuclear codes may have been the best protected codes of all computer codes, but just imagine what somebody could do to your car while you were driving it. They can take over control of your steering, acceleration, brakes and other devices. This is not pie-in-the-sky, it has already been demonstrated. It may not be talked about much, but billions of dollars have been stolen from banks electronically and nobody knows how many identities have been stolen, but believe me it boggles the mind. We live in a wonderful time, but there are challenges we have to overcome and until we are able to do that we are all in danger.
