Woz: We've made machines too important
Technically Incorrect: Speaking in Massachusetts, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak says humans lost to the machines 200 years ago and that putting computers in a classroom doesn't make kids smarter.
Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.
I am writing this at the behest of my leader, the Lady Laptop.
For a number of years now, she has tried to explain to me who's boss. I have offered resistance. Ignorant resistance. She tired of trying to just look at me with a patronizing eye. Now if I don't call her Lady Laptop, she gets into a sulk and crashes.
I finally realize why she does this, because Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak explained it last night. As MassLive reports, Woz was speaking in Massachusetts, where he helped the assembled throng understand the reality of today's world.
"The machines won 200 years ago," he said. It's quaint to think that in a week in which many humans have become enthralled by the idea of talking to their watches, they still think they're in charge.
Woz insisted it's our own fault the machines are in control.
"We made them too important. That makes us the family pet," he said. He's mentioned the pet idea before, when he mused that artificial intelligence was a serious threat to our very survival.
There's something bracing about the founder of the world's most famous tech company saying he doesn't think computers are necessarily such a great thing. For example, in education.
He told the Mass masses: "A lot of our schools slow students down. We put computers in schools and the kids don't come out thinking any better."
Computers, he said, can't make up for the fact that class sizes are too big. They can't compensate for kids who have special talents being held back by the system. They can't make you creative.
As we continue to hurtle toward a computer-dominated world, to a point where machines will be implanted in our bodies, there's one question that always remains unanswered until it's too late: Will we be happier?
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How fear and self-preservation are driving a cyber arms race
Silicon Valley is pouring more money into Internet security companies than ever before.
When a man was fired from his job in Minneapolis, Minn., last May, he inadvertently touched off a boom in Silicon Valley.
Gregg Steinhafel, then a 35-year veteran of Target and its CEO, was shown the door after hackers infiltrated the retailer's computer systems, stealing 70 million shopper's information and 40 million credit and debit card numbers. It turned out the hack might have been prevented, had the company not ignored warnings from its own security systems.
It happened again in December, when Amy Pascal, one of the most powerful women in Hollywood, was fired from her job heading up Sony Pictures after hackers exposed thousands of financial documents and emails revealing the film studio's inner secrets. The hack captured the world's attention and elicited criticism from customers, industry leaders and even the president of the United States.
Pascal and Steinhafel's exits sent shockwaves through corporate America. The message was clear: Top executives will be held responsible for their company's cybersecurity failings.
The result, venture capitalists say, has been a boom for cybersecurity startups. In ways that previous attacks on consumers never did, the firings have sparked a scramble for new security technology by companies desperate to head off the next costly, embarrassing cyberattack. And venture capitalists are responding, pouring unprecedented billions into a dizzying array of young companies and their, largely, untested products.
Last year, these companies received an aggregate $2.39 billion in funding, a 35 percent increase over 2013, according to venture capital data firm CB Insights. That's the most money that's been funneled into cybersecurity companies ever. Silicon Valley is betting companies have woken up to the real dangers of living in the Internet age.
"The demand is off the charts and so is the confusion," said Venky Ganesan, a venture capitalist at Menlo Ventures. Companies, he said, are becoming obsessed with staying a step ahead of hackers, who themselves are using ever more sophisticated attacks. "It is an arms race," he said.
The types of technologies being funded range from the germane to the bizarre. One company called Armour.io claims to protect company data. Another called Injector helps you generate and store strong passwords. Praesidio helps protect bankers on the Internet. Thunder Defense aims to block governments and hackers from monitoring you through your webcam.
Then there's Team8, a cybersecurity startup founded to help found other cybersecurity startups.
Making cyber lemonade out of security lemons
Hacking isn't new, but the attention paid to it is unprecedented. In 2014, The New York Times devoted more than 700 articles to discussing data breaches, up from 125 the year prior. Verizon, in its annual cybersecurity report released in April, concluded "data breach," had become part of the American public's psyche.
In the past year, it's happened to police departments, banks, schools, the Ukrainian military and even some email systems at the US State Department and White House.
And now it's terrifying corporate boardrooms.
Facing that threat is costly. Companies and governments worldwide are expected to spend $80 billion on hardware and software to protect themselves against cybersecurity attacks this year, up from $74 billion in last year, according to information technology research firm Gartner.
"It's a big market growing faster," said Enrique Salem, managing director at Bain Capital Ventures.
Salem ought to know. He's the former CEO of Symantec, a massive antivirus company which, along with Norton and Kaspersky, became a household name for many PC owners over the past three decades. But today, according to Salem, antivirus software isn't enough. In fact, experts say that type of software is becoming irrelevant as hackers shift their focus to attack smartphones through wireless and cellular networks, instead of the old days when they targeted desktop computers connected to the Internet over telephone cords.
So, Salem is investing in companies like Attivo Networks and Evident.io, all of which help companies that are in danger or have already been hacked. What they offer helps to reduce the damage hackers may have already done.
Call it pessimistic or grim, but it's not unique.
Ajay Arora is one of the entrepreneurs who's benefiting. His company, Vera, markets itself as a kind of Snapchat for businesses, promising a way to delete a user's files, videos and images on demand.
When Arora was formulating his company's technology two years ago, potential corporate clients often directed him to their IT staff. Now he meets with top executives because, he said, they "are scared to death."
Venture capitalists are concerned this sudden attention for the cybersecurity industry could attract poorly conceived startups, the digital equivalents of snake oil salesmen peddling magical new technology that can't actually protect a company.
"Products don't lie, but PowerPoints do," said Ganesan of Menlo Ventures. "Unfortunately, right now, we're in the PowerPoint stage...Eventually, the dam will break."
But those concerns haven't stopped venture capital firms including Ganesan's from increasing the percentage of its investments allocated for security. Menlo predicts its current $400 million fund will allocate 20 percent of toward cybersecurity, up from 5 percent in its last fund which began five years ago.
And Menlo Ventures isn't alone: Intel Capital, Accel Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers are actively betting on the sector. Each has invested in more than 15 cybersecurity startups, according to CB Insights.
Meanwhile, Battery Ventures has increased the number of cybersecurity-focused startups it backs from one company three years ago to four today.
Roger Lee, a general partner at Battery, says his investment strategy boils down to a basic assumption. "This notion that you haven't been breached is unreal."
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