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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 May 1999 Issue No. 430 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 May 1999 Issue No. 430
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Supplement Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Beware the first of January
By Mohamed Sid-Ahmed
Computers, the symbol of contemporary civilisation, are becoming more and more indispensable in our everyday life. They have also become our doorway into worlds to which we previously had no access. In the pre-computer age, we had to rely on our five senses, plus our mind and abstract logic, to try and comprehend what was happening around us. Now, thanks to computers, we can explore worlds infinitely smaller, or bigger, than the one our senses reveal to us. Computers have liberated us from the constraints of our size in the universe at large, but they also threaten us with new dangers we could have never foreseen.
We can now figuratively board an 'elevator' which will not take us from a lower to a higher level or vice-versa, but from where we stand on our planet to worlds either infinitely smaller or bigger, with 'stops' along the way that would reveal to us worlds not only different from ours in size but also in substance and structure. Going down the scale, we can visit the world of bacteria (the smallest living beings on the planet), viruses, molecules, atoms, electrons, qwarks (the smallest element discovered so far); moving up the scale, we can visit the world of planets, stars, galaxies, and eventually 'black holes'. Our ability to explore our environment has thus acquired qualitatively new dimensions.
At a more mundane level, computers have become so much a part of our everyday life that it is no longer possible to cope with the complexity of the modern world's requirements without them in the fields of banking, insurance, travel, communications, etc. E-mail is gradually supplanting normal mail. Through the Internet, citizens are gradually becoming more and more entangled in electronic nets with an indefinite number of other citizens from all over the world.
True, fully one half of humanity has as yet not used a telephone. True, wide surfaces of the planet still lack electrical circuits without which computer networks cannot work. The deep disparities in the respective degrees of development of various countries offset many of the advantages of the technological revolution. However, such shortcomings do not overshadow the degree of interpenetration and integration of networks at the summit of world society, where key decisions involving the fate of the entire globe are taken. It is no accident that the richest man on earth today is not an industry, insurance, banking, oil, air, sea, or railway magnate, but Bill Gates, the creator of Microsoft.
Despite such outstanding achievements, the whole electronic revolution remains critically vulnerable. This will become crystal-clear to everybody in only a few months.
When computers started becoming widespread less than half a century ago, nobody imagined then that they would develop into networks which would continue performing into the following century. When it came to recording the time at which any given bit of information was introduced into the computer's memory, the year was denoted by a two, instead of a four, digit date (1963 for instance, was stored as 63). This did not pose any problems as long as we dealt with events within the twentieth century; it becomes a very serious problem as soon as we move into the twenty first century (63 denotes not only 1963, but also 2063, 2163, etc).
The fact that one given symbol is used to represent an indefinite number of different things (different dates, for instance) is a serious enough defect, but what is still more serious is if this or other structural loopholes are used to deliberately disrupt the system by hackers or any other parties out to steal information, decipher codes and/or destroy computer booting systems and memory. A case in point is the Chernobyl virus launched on 26 April this year, which succeeded in silencing computers all over the world. Egypt, where computers in given fields are already indispensable, but where computer know-how is still tentative, was particularly hard hit. The question is whether a cautionary lesson can be drawn from the experience, and whether there is enough time before 1 January 2000, to pre-empt whatever breakdown could occur on that date.
Computers are already the recipients of all sorts of precious information with questionable 'immune systems' against the threat of theft. If these systems go wrong, theft could be money from banks, state military secrets, even how to trigger nuclear devices!
This week, Chicago hosted a gathering of some ten thousand computer hardware and software experts and planners to discuss means of averting worst-case scenarios and test the reliability of a wide range of new security devices, mainly 'smart cards' capable of identifying individuals by their fingerprints, facial characteristics, tone of voice, etc. Still, the fundamental problem behind the whole issue is of a more encompassing character.
Technology, particularly electronic technology which controls the field of information, has done much in this last half-century to improve living standards and upgrade quality of life for much, if not all, of humanity. But it can also expose humanity to catastrophes of an unprecedented scope -- bottlenecks, breakdowns, chaos, even extinction. Until recently, this threat was more theoretical than real. The real thing could very well begin on 1 January 2000.
