Security in Technology

One thing that I have been pondering recently is how difficult security is to maintain in the realm of technology. It seems like everyday some piece of technology's weakness is exploited. One day hackers are attacking the iPhone. The next day, hackers are working on Windows 7. And the next day, hackers are stealing confidential information off of Citibank's main servers. When will this end?

I assert that the exploitations of security in new technological devices will never end. Let's face it, these devices are built by imperfect programmers. Therefore, the devices themselves are also imperfect. They all have weaknesses. And as long as there are people around looking for a good challenge (legal or not), the security in these devices is going to be breached.

The only possible way to ensure 100% security on these devices is if the programmer tests the device exhaustively (i.e. the programmer tests the device in every possible way, which, due to time constraints, is impossible). Not only that, but assume that upon learning of such design flaws, the programmer modifies the device's software to fix such flaws. Often, fixing a flaw, creates a new one. Therefore, I think we are going to be facing these kinds of problems forever. Thirty years ago it was a problem. Fifteen years ago it was a problem. Now it is a problem. And rest assured, ten years from now it is still going to be a problem.

Well, looking on the bright side, at least the computer security experts can harbor a strong sense of job security.

Technology in Pushing Forward God's Work

It blows my mind to see how the church has used technology in advancing the Lord's work. The process of building a family tree has never been easier. Years ago, one would have had to go through volume after volume, catalog after catalog, in order to find information on a relatvie that lived one hundred years ago. Now, I can login to my FamilySearch account, and find out how many siblings my great-great-great-great-great grandfather had in less than three minutes. I think of the cool things about this phenomenon is that it is so tied to what I am currently studying. It is more efficient algorithms and data structures that allows users to find their ancestors among a database of billions of names in just a few seconds. I love living now! It blows my mind to think what other advances will come about in the next 10, 20, or 100 years in the way the church does the Lord's work. Who knows, maybe one day someone will create a data mining machine that does all of our extraction work for us. That would be awesome.