We stand at the threshold of a new era, one where code running on distributed machines is programmed to think, work, and even create for us. A world in which a few dozen billionaires fund self-writing code to program robots—made in factories they own. We could be at the precipice of a utopia, an anti-capitalist nirvana—no longer beholden to the day’s labor equaling a day’s ration. This potential reality is a dream as old as the words of John the Revelator and Thomas Aquinas. Or perhaps we stand at the brink of destruction, blinded by hubris and shareholder greed.
I have watched the world embrace computers, the internet, and now AI. I have seen the wonder, the uncertainty, and the fear surrounding them all. The explorations in these pages will span Information Security, Philosophy, AI, Hacking Culture and History, and while I write primarily for myself, I hope that you, Dear Reader, find some edification in these texts. But perhaps these are but whispers in the gnashing machine.
I find myself staring into a void, an intellectual chasm that spans the realities of what is and what may come to be. Inside that void is the technology by which we will become our own savior or destroyer. The pages that follow seek to explore that connection, and perhaps, if I may be so bold, influence them in my own small way. I speak to the creators, the programmers, the dreamers and the zealots.