Thursday, June 4, 2020

Skepticism About Emerging Technology Is Not New

But with blockchain as well as self-driving cars, it doesn’t help that these technologies are often seen threatening to replace workers. It’s pretty easy to find people getting snarky about the technology.

I can’t help but think of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and how its early versions were easily hackable, leaving millions in a cybersecurity lurch. That’s why Transport Layer Security (TLS) was developed as an SSL replacement. Heartbleed (2012) and Shellshock (2014) were a nice one-two punch to SSL/TLS, open source and Linux. Yet we’re using all of these things today more than ever, though in updated form. Linux continues its domination of the web and the cloud. Companies including Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle and IBM continue to use it as a foundational technology. TLS is a bedrock technology used in hundreds of millions of web browsers, virtual private networks (VPNs) and network connections.

I can’t help but think of other former emerging technologies. Secure Shell (SSH), for example, has endured many fatal flaws that allowed attackers to trivially “own” unpatched SSH servers. Did this kill SSH? If so, someone should let Microsoft know – they’ve (finally) adopted SSH as the de facto way to remotely manage servers.

My point? No one seriously suggested dumping SSL just because its implementation ran into a fatal flaw or two. The fundamental premise was valid and secure. It was just time to regroup, fix a few things and move on.

In spite of setbacks that any emerging technology will have, blockchain continues to make its expected impact. Gartner continues to see blockchain as a major trend for 2019 and beyond. MIT Review feels that blockchain will become normalized in 2019 (I would have written rationalized). Organizations such as Walmart, Tesco and Amazon are using it for smart contacts and supply chain.
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