GNUCITIZEN has another brilliant post on the hacking of social networks (previously mentioned on this blog here with a real world example of cloned and imitative networks here). Quote:
"One important point that I would like to make regarding social networks, which is also one of the things which I believe will become a new phenomenon in the information security industry, is that I am more then certain that they will be the place where new types of information overlords or puppet masters even, will be born. Looking back in time, every information security expert, hacker and information junkie that has been long enough in this scene can easily see a few very basic patterns: spam works, so that drive-by-download, people are the weakest link not computers, and simple things work best.
The puppet masters will be the people with far too many identities for the average human to keep up with. The kind of people who have their fingers in every organization and have the invisible influence to guide the masses. Keep in mind that social networks are designed to aggregate people. But people who know how to make the most use of the technology will be overpowered. This is definitely something to keep and eye on as soon or later you will realize or hear in the news that someone has performed an important business operation based on data or connections pulled from social networks. This is the new type of spam, or botnet, or drive-by-download attack which unless security software is built around an AI, it will be able to prevent from or even detect."
5 comments:
"But people who know how to make the most use of the technology will be overpowered."
Should the word be empowered instead of overpowered?
purpleslog, given the context of the word in the sentence, and preceding sentences, I would say he means empowered. Definitely ambiguous as it could be read as the puppet master being run over by his own power, but yeah, what you suggested is probably correct.
Perhaps the writer has a non-english speaking background?
Could be. Maybe he just made a typo and the proof-reader editor glossed over it.
He means 'overpowered' as in
To supply with excessive mechanical power.
The internet empowers everyone, but it only gives excessive power to those that know how to manipulate it.
Vernor Vinge's Rainbow's End was a great novel for how such puppet masters could act or relate to others.
I never understood overpowered to mean that. I took overpowered to mean overwhelmed. Your definition of overpowered mean superpowered to me. Anyways, I think we are both reading the author's intent the same way.
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