BRUCE SCHNEIER, CTO OF COUNTERPANE INTERNET SECURITY, AUTHOR OF BEYOND FEAR:
Q: Will computers be more or less secure in 2028 than they are today?
A: Computers will be just as insecure, but computing will be more secure. Right now our major problem is that computer security
is brittle; when it breaks, it breaks completely. As computing becomes embedded and invisible, it will become more resilient.
Different systems will work in tandem, providing defense in depth. Cyberspace is no different than the real world: The individual
pieces may be insecure, but the collection of pieces we call society hums along just fine.
Q: If you were to take a stab at labeling the technology eras of the future, out to the year 2028, what would you call them?
A: Ten year: the embedded era. I think we've moving from computers to small embedded computing devices. Fifteen year: the
invisible era. Eventually computing devices will become invisible, just as they are today in cars. Twenty year: the intelligent
era. Invisible devices communicating with each other will mimic intelligence. The world around us will become "smart."
Q: What transformative technologies will be coming down the pike in the next 25 years, and when do you think those will happen?
A: Pattern recognition is the key to so many activities. It'll be able to find things we're interested in, identify people
as they're walking down the street, and detect interesting events before they're perceptible to us. It's not AI [artificial
intelligence], but it'll be the closest thing to intelligence we're likely to see for a while. As to when, I have no idea.
Substantive changes require jumps in thinking, which are hard to predict.
Q: What major technology issues today will become inconsequential or significantly less important in the future?
A: Bandwidth, certainly. Eventually bandwidth will be free, just as storage largely is today. On the other hand, user interface
will become vital in the future. Computers need to be intuitive, and they're just not. They're not really mass-market consumer
items, even though they are sold as such.
IRVING WLADAWSKY-BERGER, VICE PRESIDENT OF TECHNOLOGY AND STRATEGY, IBM:
Q: What is the next step after on-demand computing?
A: To make much much better use of all that information in something that we would call "intelligence," but the technical
term people really use is "semantic Web," or adding semantics to the Internet. Semantics really means that it is possible
to analyze the information … when I say information, I mean oceans of information, and extract what's going on in [such a
way] that you would say, "My God, this is intelligent" -- it's doing it at such lightning speed that what emerges is truly
the closest thing we have to intelligence. … So the era beyond integrating all the processes is making it all far more intelligent,
so that it's much easier to use.
Q: What transformative technologies will be coming down the pike in the next 25 years, and when do you think those will happen?
A: The whole evolution of standards into grid and Web services is one. … I call them all the Internet standards. I think the
second one is this whole notion [that] we'll learn how to do much more semantic analysis to extract intelligence out of all
this information.
Q: What must happen to make this possible?
A: No. 1, we need massive research. These are really difficult problems, so you need big investments in R&D. In the United
States, the government needs to make sure there is long-term funding for research. Private companies like IBM need to make
sure they invest in R&D to make sure these things happen. Those things will happen if you put the right R&D punch behind it,
and it will take time.
Q: What major technology issues will become inconsequential or significantly less important in the future?
A: Worrying about .Net or J2EE will be seen as a quaint little problem at the turn of the century. … I think that a lot of
the issues on operating systems will become more and more commoditized. People will say, "And wasn't there this silly lawsuit
[where] some bad people tried to stop progress?' A lot of the skirmishes will just disappear, because progress requires more
agreement by companies and government for standards. This bad behavior just gets shoved aside. You cannot tolerate it because
of the common good. I think that a lot of the skirmishes will just get drowned.
Q: What about the problem of security?
A: Security has to be built into everything. I think that as technologies get more and more powerful, the ability to encrypt
all communications will just be a matter of fact. … There will always be people trying to break into things and so on, so
you're never done, but I'm pretty comfortable that it's an area where huge progress will continue to be made.
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