As witnessed with the Boeing 737 Max fiasco, the Russian hacks during the 2016 presidential campaign and the massive data breaches at every large organization including the NSA, life-supporting services needed for the 21st Century cyber society are unsound. Over time they unavoidably grow too complex to exhaustively test and too fragile to remain secure from hackers and malware.
The general-purpose computer began in WWII, and technical flaws from that per-electronic age were soon amplified by the centralized architecture of shared linear memory that led to the page-based virtual machine, the time-shared operating system, and the almighty 'un-elected' super-users in charge of our destiny in a Cyber-Revolution.
The general-purpose computer began in WWII, and technical flaws from that per-electronic age were soon amplified by the centralized architecture of shared linear memory that led to the page-based virtual machine, the time-shared operating system, and the almighty 'un-elected' super-users in charge of our destiny in a Cyber-Revolution.
Attempts to secure this toxic concoction in the open global network are endlessly incomplete and mathematically dysfunctional. Patching simply exposes new flaws for malware downloads and remote hackers. Adding more software defense simply adds overheads without solving the underlying hardware problems on the computational surface of cyberspace. The mathematical model of the monolithic software in every general-purpose computer is flawed. There is a lack of science in the overstretched, over-shared memory and the unfair instruction privileges in a General-Purpose Computer. These concoctions are like the heap of 'Napier's Bones' when William Oughtred's clockwork 'Slide-Rule' is needed.
It was 1614 when John Napier invented logarithms to facilitate his investigation of God's universe and the movement of distant stars. Once, Edmund Gunter created the logarithmic scale Oughtred used two such sliding scales to instantly perform much more than just multiplication and division. He created a fail-safe, fully functional mechanical computer.
In modern parlance, a Slide-Rule is an object-oriented, multi-functional machine for a mathematical class of abstractions. An objective class of capability-based, fail-safe machine for sine and cosine functions and a host of other mathematical functions from reciprocals to roots all found instantly and with ease.
Unlike a General-Purpose Computer, the Slide rule needs no centralized operating system or complex, well-memorized but unfamiliar 'best-practices' and hides no unfair super-user powers for hackers to silently corrupt results. The clockwork machinery of a Slide-Rule powered the Industrial Revolution, culminating with astronaut Buzz Aldrin and flight commander Neil Armstrong's trip in Apollo 11 to the surface of the Moon and back in 1969.
In modern parlance, a Slide-Rule is an object-oriented, multi-functional machine for a mathematical class of abstractions. An objective class of capability-based, fail-safe machine for sine and cosine functions and a host of other mathematical functions from reciprocals to roots all found instantly and with ease.
Unlike a General-Purpose Computer, the Slide rule needs no centralized operating system or complex, well-memorized but unfamiliar 'best-practices' and hides no unfair super-user powers for hackers to silently corrupt results. The clockwork machinery of a Slide-Rule powered the Industrial Revolution, culminating with astronaut Buzz Aldrin and flight commander Neil Armstrong's trip in Apollo 11 to the surface of the Moon and back in 1969.
Solving the monolithic concoctions of branded, general-purpose computers is impossible for the same reasons Napier's Bones could not power the Industrial Revolution. Both are founded on complex human training, so-called best-practices performed by fully trusted administrators running trusted software. However, in a global network of international nations at war in cyberspace trust is impossible to sustain.
Blind trust from WWII will never sustain the centuries of promise in the Cyber-Revolution. To match the centuries of success from the Industrial Revolution requires the mathematical clockwork of the Slide-Rule and the Abacus. A General-Purpose Computer is unsafe and far too dangerous for long-term widespread public use over generations
The clockwork of object-oriented function abstractions sheltered by the laws of the Lambda-Calculus and Capability Limited Addressing is the only scientific option. The full measure of the Church-Turing Thesis is the only way to secure the future throughout the Cyber-Revolution. The assortment of branded General-Purpose Computers using strange binary conventions must be replaced by the pure, lasting mathematical abstractions of a Church-Turing Machine.
Furthermore, this changeover must start immediately using the momentum of the Internet of Things for deployment. If Life 3.0 and the point of singularity usurp human intelligence the war will be forever lost. Artificially Intelligent Malware is already in the hands of foreign enemies, as well as international criminals, thus things can only get worse, remote hacking will flourish as super-user privileges are attacked by highly-skilled, international gangs and enemy states.
Furthermore, this changeover must start immediately using the momentum of the Internet of Things for deployment. If Life 3.0 and the point of singularity usurp human intelligence the war will be forever lost. Artificially Intelligent Malware is already in the hands of foreign enemies, as well as international criminals, thus things can only get worse, remote hacking will flourish as super-user privileges are attacked by highly-skilled, international gangs and enemy states.
The progress of civilization and democracy depends on the future-safe architecture of a Church-Turing Machine. Only the science of the Church Turing Thesis guarantees the promise of the Cyber-Revolution. This critical subject is revealed in my new book, Civilizing Cyberspace: The Fight for Digital Democracy or visit my blog.
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