Marc Goodman’s Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It is a fantastic examination of good and evil in cyberspace. Marc really knows his material and on top of that writes incredibly well. I’ve been in and around the cybersecurity community for so long I find myself getting numbed by the constant news and really valued Marc placing so much threat information into a context anyone can understand. He writes in a way that everyone can understand and he covers materials that everyone should understand.
Marc starts the book off in a great way, anchoring us all in a reality that many in the cybersecurity community would recognize. He starts with how he was called into this world, then leads us directly into the dark world of technology enabled crime. From these roots in his past he then builds connections into what is happening today. But as the title of the book suggests, this is not about what was in the past or what is happening today. Marc points to trends that are leading us into tomorrow.
The book goes far beyond what is traditionally considered cyber security. It its on new and emerging fields of technology including robotics, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, synthetic biology, and of course the use of high powered computers to achieve criminal objectives. Marc also points us to optimistic/positive implications of technology and does so in ways that can inform our collective strategies going forward.
This is well worth a read.
Additional Reading:
The Air Traffic Control System: We all assumed it was vulnerable, but now we know
WTF?: What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Fred Kaplan Explores The Secret History of Cyber War
What You Need To Know About The Administration’s Cybersecurity National Action Plan
Like Kip in Napoleon Dynamite, We love Technology
