Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Crowd Intelligence and Crowdfunding
The unexpected success of the Wikipedia encyclopedia, written by about 39 milli-
on authors, is one of the most surprising intellectual phenomena in human history.
Until Wikipedia provided a proof of concept, it was never envisioned that large
crowds working together could accomplish useful intellectual results.
The power of the web has also opened up new kinds of microinvestments
where thousands of people put money into startup companies or new product
ideas. The same idea has expanded to other fields such as funding political cam-
paigns or making charitable and philanthropic donations via microdonations of
small amounts. In fact, about 25% of the funds for the 2012 candidates in the U.S.
presidential election were microdonations.
The power of the internet and the web actually could lead to a sort of “direct
democracy” where critical urban, state, and national issues are placed before
crowds who are asked to provide opinions and potential solutions to topics such as
pension reforms and right-to-work laws. We can expect to see many new startups
that will attempt to utilize crowdfunding or
crowd intelligence
to deal with an ex-
panding array of issues.
Cybercrime and Cybersecurity
One prediction can be made with great certainty for the rest of this decade. Cy-
bercrime will increase. Whether cybersecurity will be able to stay ahead of cyber-
crime is not as positive a prediction, but hopefully that will turn out to be true.
It is probably time for a fundamental evaluation of computer architecture and
software constructs. The von Neumann architecture seems to have some intrinsic
security flaws, and alternate architectures might eliminate them. Virtual memory
is a key area of cybercrime exploitation. Permission mechanisms need a thorough
reevaluation.
Comparing cybercrime to medical illness, firewalls are a bit like wearing latex
gloves to prevent infection. Antivirus software packages are a bit like vaccines
that attempt to keep harmful agents from becoming active by killing them. Search-
and-destroy tools such as Malwarebytes are a bit like white blood cells that seek
out harmful agents and destroy them.
However, as with real medical practice, none of the methods are 100% effect-
ive. Firewalls leak and are probably not more than 97% effective. Antivirus pack-
ages are only partially successful and probably don't block more than about 98%
of known viruses. Search-and-destroy tools are probably not more than 95% suc-
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