When I was growing up, my father was a firm believer in two things: technology and manly responsibility. Our home was a testament to both these ideals. There was nothing that could not be automated that was not; there was no modern convenience that we would not integrate into our dwelling. Our phone system was a business model that permitted my father to reach out through speaker intercom to any room in the home, finding us and dispatching us on daily tasks from his home office. We were early adopters of cable, VCRs and video games.
We owned multiple computers, starting with a Tandy 1000SX with a dot-matrix printer and a monochrome monitor. My father taught me not only how to use MS-DOS, but how to program my own computer menus in it. He was first an engineer, then a technical writer by trade; in college, his hobbies were building his own electronic equipment, radio and television tuners, and that sort of thing.
My father drove a series of vehicles that were a testament to his sensibilities: full-size Blazers and Jimmies, a couple of conversion vans, a Suburban that he's owned for 20 years and into which he's installed no less than three engines. Each of these vehicles was characterized by custom compartments he built himself, in which he hauled what would probably have been enough equipment to outfit a modern machine shop. He was a firm believer in being prepared for every eventuality.
My father taught me how to cope with emergencies. He taught me how to assess a problem, plan a solution, and execute that solution – sometimes under duress, and sometimes when quick action was better than no action. In his pocket every day of his life he carried, and still does, the biggest Swiss Army knife the company manufactures. He owned countless tools, in fact, and marked each one of them with a color coding of his own design. Given all this, given my father's love for technology and his appreciation for modern tools, he should have been the most eager of consumers when it finally came time to purchase a new lawnmower for the homestead.
Mowing lawns and other outdoor chores were among the many manly responsibilities my father saw as a male prerogative. My sister, the middle child, was largely spared dealing with such tasks. The responsibility rightly fell to me and to our younger brother. My father was a fastidious groundskeeper who believed the lawn should not only be mowed often and meticulously, but preferably in one direction only. He owned a series of lawn tractors and other equipment with which we maintained the property – and he had very strong opinions about the worth of a given piece of machinery, always tied to its practical reliability.
So it was that I found him in our garage one day staring at our new lawnmower. The oil-burning beast of a gasoline lawnmower that previously I used for the lawn had finally given up the ghost. That machine had been a simple, reliable (if ancient) device. It was the color of dirt and old lawn clippings, crusted with the debris of many seasons of service. The new machine was much brighter, much easier to start, and ran much cleaner.
My father hated it.
Time, it seemed, had caught up to us. The machine had a variety of safety features that made it almost impossible to use – a giant rubber flap trailing the back that prevented the operator from backing up, a huge blade guard at the side that made it difficult to get close enough to obstacles when trimming. A ridiculous safety bar was tied to the clutch, shutting the machine off when the handle was released. My father looked at these modern contrivances, which interfered with the machine's utility, and extended his hand without looking at me.
"Hand me that screwdriver," he said.
We removed every piece of extraneous safety garbage from the mower. In operation, I would tie a rag around the safety bar to prevent the mower from turning itself off. And for the rest of my life, my father's attitude about practicality versus modernization would forever affect my own outlook.
Today, I'm seeing the world through my father's eyes. I bought a new car recently, a 2015 model. It has so many computerized features that it has a setup screen identical to that of my smartphone, wherein certain options are configured. As incredible and futuristic as all these features make something as fundamental as a daily commuter vehicle, it also introduces many points of failure and previously unknown vulnerabilities. There is so much that can go wrong. My car can now perform software updates. Given how often these go awry with my computer, it's only a matter of time before an errant update interferes with my car.
Then there is the danger of malicious actors. A pair of hackers, one of them an employee of microblogging site Twitter (and a former NSA analyst) disclosed recently their ability to use a Jeep Cherokee's wireless communications system to take control of the vehicle. Using a laptop, they disabled the SUV's transmission from miles away, taking advantage of the Jeep's connection to the Internet through wireless technology. Major automobile manufacturers promptly and elaborately freaked out, including Fiat Chrysler (manufacturer of the Jeep in question). Interestingly, the company seemed more angry (that the hackers had disclosed this vulnerability publicly) than concerned (that they have failed to secure this aspect of their new, modern, connected automobiles).
The problem is not just cars; it's everything. A single text message can give hackers access to your Android phone. Another can shut down an iPhone (or could). Hell, we're not even entirely certain our enemies can't take control of our combat drones in mid-flight. Our modern conveniences and innovations are creating new vulnerabilities for which we are not prepared … and not preparing.
Innovation must be tempered with caution. When "progress" interferes with function, we have not progressed at all. When innovation creates new dangers, we have no choice but to address these. The alternative is failure, and failure is not an option for a free people.
Media wishing to interview Phil Elmore, please contact [email protected].
|