Avoided tragedies are deeply toxic because they make us believe we are immortal, untouchable, made of titanium, and make us distrust the doomsayers and Cassandras who tell us of doom and gloom. In tech it’s called the “2000 effect,” a story old people tell around motherboards as a big problem that never happened. As Sophia Petrillo says, it was New Year’s Eve 199…
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limitations
Avoided tragedies are deeply toxic because they make us believe we are immortal, untouchable, made of titanium, and make us distrust the doomsayers and Cassandras who tell us of doom and gloom. In tech it’s called the “2000 effect,” a story old people tell around motherboards as a big problem that never happened. As Sophia Petrillo says, it was New Year’s Eve 1999. The world was on edge. The threat of the “Year 2000 effect” is real, and no one can accurately determine the impact this failure will have on the prehistoric technology of the time. The “Millennium Error” is based on the idea that no one will arrive by the year 2000 or, if they do, we’ll already teleport away. Star Trek to another distant galaxy. We don’t “future-proof” computers and computers don’t keep years with four digits, but with two. So the risk of them changing from 1999 to 1990 when changing the year was real. But it didn’t happen. Not because of a magical act, or because computers healed themselves, or because the doomsayers were wrong, but because many people prepared, worked hard, and avoided disaster.
The rest of us humans, oblivious to the effort, created a meme called the “2000 Effect” and went about our lives laughing at the absent wolf. Every time one wants to prevent a technology problem, one is always ready to remember the year 2000 or the last time money was spent on a remote failed technology project. The brothers-in-law give their opinion and many important things like security, they find reasons not to confront the madman by using their dull speech and using their cowardice wisely. These creatures we all know create so that nothing changes, so that in the medium term everything gets worse.
Right now we are in the middle of an experiment in the application of shock theory by artificial intelligence companies, however, we are not applying the precautionary principles we should have learned from that experience to other existential risk technologies. Like AIs at the time, quantum computers are one of those rare risks with an immature, expensive, difficult-to-operate and incomprehensible technology that no one can set a timeline for. I still remember the jokes about the results of generative AIs and the vague sayings that the incomprehensible, opaque and very expensive gadgets couldn’t do anything useful for anyone. It seemed like it would never come, indicating the agenda that it was an unwanted visitor who came unexpectedly and wanted to stay and live.
In the quantum case, added is the complexity of quantum mechanics, an elusive branch of physics that is closer to mathematical belief than experience. In this paper Raoul Liman is devoting very interesting parts to quantum, in which he explains the edges of this theory that are used to practice better than I can do on this platform. In this regard, I limit myself to sharing the bewilderment of US President Joe Biden during his acceptance speech when he visited the IBM headquarters in Poughkeepsie and showed off a quantum computer. Chips and the Law of Science. Biden’s face is a poem. We didn’t realize that that chandelier hanging from an outdated theater would be capable of breaking a missile system’s cryptography, all of our communications, or dissolving the blockchain like a sugar cube. I am sorry for the dissatisfaction Cryptocurrencies But if there is a quantum tsunami effect, we truly know what the existential risk is. Because if the encryption used for the data and systems of all states, companies and institutions collapses, their services collapse, and with them, society as we know it. It won’t be an epidemic with Netflix and TikTok challenges. There will be a blackout where basic services will not be available for a limited period of time. The problem is that no one knows when it will happen, everyone knows how to prepare, but no one knows how. We don’t know if it’ll be around five or ten years from now, whether it’ll work with the Visigothic crown that Biden is thinking about, or come up with some other lighter, simpler, and faster-to-use gadget. If it’s the Chinese or the Americans. But there is consensus that it will happen. Like self-fulfilling prophecies, the more you believe the technology will work, the more you invest in making it work.
A practical problem arising from the theory that a quantum computer is capable of solving a mathematical problem in seconds now takes years to solve. We must defend ourselves against technology that threatens us. Meanwhile, governments such as the United States through the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which takes several years Dedicating efforts to the development of post-quantum cryptography This is because they rightly fear that building large-scale quantum computers could undermine many of the public-key cryptosystems that underpin the security and integrity of communications and information on the Internet. While both NIST and the US government believe it will take 15 to 20 years to get quantum computers, they don’t think it’s wise to wait until everything explodes. For this reason, the US federal government’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has asked all federal agencies to identify the systems under their control. And, once identified, they plan to implement hybrid solutions (current and post-quantum encryption) for what might happen.
In short, we know something needs to be done, there are people doing it, but we don’t know if it’s going to work in the real world. It’s in that critical period, between working quantum machines and seeing if countermeasures work, that we can kill ourselves as a society.
You can follow Technology of the country Inside Facebook Y Twitter Or sign up here to reach us Seminal Newsletter.
