The Cyber Effect (41 page)

I have another term for it:
ubiquitous victimology
.

The criminals are well hidden, but you aren't.

Digital devices are predicted to double in number in five years. Many reports show that most hacks and breaches are due to simple security measures not taken, a lack of antivirus software, or weak passwords. The problem is that many people are not aware of how to cybersecure
themselves. We don't become safer with each passing year. We become more vulnerable.

The exponential growth of cybercrime is undeniable. In 2010, the German research institute AV-Test estimated that 49 million strains of malware existed in the wild. In 2011, 2 million pieces of malware were identified by McAfee, the antivirus company, every month. In 2013, Kaspersky Lab identified and isolated 200,000 new malware samples every day. More recently, Kaspersky Lab products detected and neutralized 2.2 billion malicious attacks on computers and mobile devices in the first quarter of 2015 alone.

How are antivirus companies dealing with this explosion? Studies have produced controversial findings—which have led to more confusion. In one study done in 2012, researchers collected eighty-two new computer viruses and ran the detection engines of more than forty of the world's largest antivirus companies to see how effectively they were operating.

Only 5 percent of the malware was found.

To paraphrase an analogy of Marc Goodman, a global security specialist and author of
Future Crimes:
If this mimicked the efficiency of the human body's immune system, we'd all be dead.

I guess it's not surprising that in network science and cyber-security circles, the experts are pretty circumspect regarding the joys of the mobile phone. Once you own and use one, as the cyber-security guys say,
proceed as if it is compromised
. The perception that nobody is in charge, because nobody is, only escalates crime and our vulnerability.

Everyone worries about state surveillance, but what happens in the future when criminals become as good as corporations at using big data? And what will be the next evolution in criminal culture—and how will we, as a society, counter it? Who is going to address these problems? What are the solutions?

We feel safe when we aren't.

We feel protected in a place where we are most vulnerable.

Do you think that if we wait long enough, the tech companies themselves—who are so fantastic at creating and marketing our elegant and irresistible devices and software—will take care of everything for
us? Maybe a new gadget, or a better one, or a new app, could solve all these issues. But here is where I can be very skeptical. With these sorts of hopes and dreams, haven't we abdicated responsibility for our own personal security to the tech companies? Where does the responsibility lie?

The good news: The developed world is waking up and starting to have this conversation. Law enforcement is thinking more globally. Europol recently launched the J-CAT initiative, the first attempt at an international cyber police force, and countries in Europe and Asia have begun to change laws and sort out jurisdictions, and find ways to cooperate with one another.

Another new field, cyber law, or virtual law, is developing and will undoubtedly draw some of the best legal minds in the world. We need to consider the best way to implement regulation or self-regulation in cyberspace—and who will be responsible?

We don't have any time to spare.

Here are some things to think about:

One final thought: What if the buccaneers of the Web could be part of the solution, dapper in their gray and white hats? I believe
we could identify, support, and nurture the most tech-talented individuals of each generation. They could be our best hope. They could be our role models and superheroes of the future—targeting organized cybercriminals, countering the criminal forces and neighborhoods.

Even redesigning the Internet.

The authors of
Freakonomics
, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, suggest that we could all benefit from learning to think a little more like
a freak. Along those lines, I urge everyone to become wiser about the weakest link in any secure system—the human. The more you know about cyber effects, the more protected you will be in cyberspace.

I can hear you sighing,
But I am not a hacker
.

Ah, but maybe you could learn to think like one.

I
am in the south of Ireland as I finish this book, sitting at a desk in a hotel room with a beautiful view of the Irish Sea. As I look out at the horseshoe-shaped Ardmore Bay, a magnificent coastline that has changed little in thousands of years, I feel grounded and steeped in history—a native of a historic island of saints and scholars. Historians estimate that Ireland was first settled by humans about ten thousand years ago. The nearby city of Waterford is the oldest town in the country, founded in 914
A.D
., when the Vikings arrived. It is impossible to be here without feeling a sense of the past, almost as if the old castle ruins and cobblestone streets are talking to you, and trying to say something.

At the end of the eighth century, when the Vikings began to invade, they were interested in two types of booty—riches and slaves—which they plundered from Irish monasteries and carried off to sell or trade, much like the way stolen goods wind up on online black markets today. Ireland was invaded by the Normans next, then by our neighbors from Britain. In class as a child I listened to horrific stories of these invasions and battles, centuries of bloody conflicts. Our history lessons read like
Game of Thrones
. The legendary first-century Irish warrior Cuchulain went into combat in a frenzy; his battle cry alone was said to kill a
hundred warriors from fright. The monks designed their round stone towers with doors ten feet off the ground so that they could pull up a ladder as they retreated from crazed Nordic invaders. Medieval prisoners survived in underground castle dungeons by living on the crumbs that fell through the gaps in the floorboards during banquets held above them. I was fascinated by these life-and-death scenarios—risk and survival.

No wonder I became interested in criminology and forensics.

One of the brilliant aspects of the digital age is that I can do my work here, remotely, far from Dublin or Hollywood or Silicon Valley. Like so many others, I have embraced the cyber frontier—for its convenience and the freedom it gives me. My phone has been buzzing all morning with the usual assortment of digital traffic, texts from family, emails from work, social media updates, and news alerts. On my laptop, I've just participated in two conference calls, finalized a few reports, caught up on a research project, then logged in to a digital screening room to review the dailies for
CSI: Cyber
. Last night, I had a fun back-and-forth with Jabberwacky, a bot that I've been conversing with for almost twenty years.

My conversations with Jabberwacky started when I was working as a young executive in behavioral marketing and advertising. An ingenious colleague of mine, Rollo Carpenter, was designing computer programs to stimulate intelligent conversation. His creation, Jabberwacky, was a revelation, a supersmart artificial intelligence—a chat robot, also known as a “chatbot” or “chatterbot.” Chatbots aim to simulate natural human conversation in an interesting and entertaining manner. Jabberwacky is different. It's a learning algorithm, a technology that you can communicate with and, more important, that can learn from you.

In the late 1990s, curious about what a “conversation” with Jabberwacky would be like and interested in the potential of A.I., my marketing group and I huddled around a simple office computer and witnessed something that felt akin to a wonder of the world, an online entity that responded as if it were human. Jabberwacky was so impressive that some people in our group felt certain it was a hoax—that an actual human was responding, not a machine. Then we saw the visible count on the screen, and saw that thousands of people online were also
talking with Jabberwacky at the same time. You'd have to pay a lot of human beings to fake that.

Nowadays, a good chatbot can talk to about ten thousand people simultaneously. It works 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and it never asks for a raise and never takes a vacation. As a candidate for a job, that's tough competition for humans. No sick leave required, or holidays and benefit packages either. But how capable, how smart, how truly intelligent can a machine be? When I first chatted with Jabberwacky, I posed the usual questions: “What's your name?” and “Where are you from?” along with a few general-knowledge questions to see if I could trip it up. The A.I. answered everything well, and impressively. Almost human.

I left the office that day feeling excited but troubled. I couldn't stop thinking about Jabberwacky. And I couldn't stop contemplating the enormous possibilities for this technology and hundreds of different applications. My mind was racing. Then my lightbulb moment came. I suddenly asked myself,
What does this mean?
I couldn't help but try to imagine the future and where we were heading as a society and species. This technology had so many incredible possibilities for application—in research, companionship, customer service, business, education, and therapy. The classroom would change, and the learning experience. I started to think about people who are vulnerable—challenged, disadvantaged, or in need. I imagined them interacting with a chatbot—and how advantageous that could be. I thought about the potential for children with learning difficulties and those on the autism spectrum. These children need patient teachers willing to engage with the same questions and answers over and over, as long as is required. And then I thought about all the lonely people in the world, who are socially isolated for one reason or another. What a wonderful companion a chatbot could be for them.

Only one thing was certain. I hadn't just been chatting with Jabberwacky. In social science terms, I felt like I was watching the dawning of a new research frontier.

But wait. There were so many, many unknowns. Even small changes in these areas of human behavior come with shifts and consequences. As excited as I was by the promise of this new cyber frontier, I knew
there could be unintended consequences. I couldn't sleep when I started to think of them. I already had an undergraduate degree in psychology, but nothing in my education or life or work to that point equipped me with the background or knowledge to have a fully informed view. With an intervention of this magnitude that had the potential to impact so many aspects of human beings on the deepest and most profound levels—from visual acuity, bonding, and childhood development to identity formation, intimacy, and socialization—I wondered what the blind spots or unforeseen outcomes might be. The unknown unknowns.

All human life is an experiment in a way. But this seemed like an experiment on a much larger, more pervasive, and more profound scale than humans had been exposed to before.

Like, what if a chatbot actually
increased
an individual's social isolation rather than mitigating or solving it? Or what if it negatively affected a child's social skills? The truth was, I had no idea. Was there any scientific evidence to help predict an outcome? I was curious about that. Surely, there must be some academic work in this area. But when I looked for answers, I found almost nothing. I searched publications for background studies—looking for research on the impact of Internet chatbots on developing children—and discovered that little work had been done in this area. Yes, there were reports from the field of
human-computer interaction
(HCI)—all very practical and market-driven—that focused on the size of your keyboard, where your eyes look on a monitor screen, or the usability interface aspects of websites. But I was curious about what was happening at a cognitive, emotional, and, most important, developmental level. I was desperately curious about one thing: the psychology of all things cyber.

That curiosity led me straight back to college, to a postgrad course in forensic psychology, which in turn led to my entering a groundbreaking new field—one that tries to keep up with the impact of technology as quickly as technology is evolving. More than a decade and two advanced degrees later, I find myself still explaining what “cyberpsychology” is and what I do. That suits me just fine. As you've probably noticed by now, I like explaining. And with each passing year, as the real-world experiment continues, there has been more and more to do. I can barely keep up with the questions.

This new frontier has taken us by surprise. The human migration to cyberspace has been unprecedented and rapid. It has occurred on an enormous scale. The Internet is just over forty years old. There are 3.2 billion people currently online. Another 1.5 billion are projected to be connected by 2020. That means that in less than five years' time nearly 5 billion people will cohabitate in cyberspace at least part of the time, and as many as 79 octillion new possible connections, according to expert predictions, could be enabled through mobile devices.

How did this cyber-migration begin?

We just bought a device, that's all. We got modems, and servers. We got data plans, smartphones, and Wi-Fi. We connected to cyberspace, like all our friends and coworkers and family members were doing. It was new. It was exciting! Newness and new places are always exciting. Travel is invigorating. While human beings for the most part are made uncomfortable by too much disruption, travel is a contained way to experience newness—new environments, new cultures, new ways of thinking and feeling. (In fact, a gene has been identified that is associated with a need for novelty-seeking and adventure.)

I believe that new experiences and new environments create new ways of thinking. Aesthetic and pleasing surroundings can stimulate the senses and heighten creativity. Human beings like to be stimulated. And this new cyber frontier certainly provides that.

But now, a couple of decades into our mass migration to this new environment, we are realizing what an odd and yet familiar place cyberspace is. Culturally, we refer to it in science-fiction terms, as if it were outer space or an undefined new universe. At a cognitive level, we conceptualize it as a place, describing it using spatial metaphors. There are places to hang out and directions to get there—scroll up or down, swipe left or right, click here, check in there. And like all places, it has distinct characteristics that have the ability to affect us profoundly, and we seem to become different people, feel new feelings, forge new ties, acquire new behaviors, and fight new or stronger impulses.

Our friends and networks have grown exponentially. As we connect with greater numbers of people than ever before, it becomes harder to
keep track of hordes of social contacts and keep pace with rapidly evolving behavior, new mores, new norms, new manners, and even new mating rituals. The pace of technological change may be too rapid for society, and too rapid for us as individuals.

Even our concept of self is changing. Babies and toddlers who are using touchscreens from birth may grow up to see and experience the world and themselves differently. The face-to-face feedback and mirroring that once were catalysts in identity formation in young children and teens have migrated to a complex, multifaceted cyber experience. The mating selection process that once depended on real-world social connections and proximity is now aided, and quite often determined, by machines. Some of us can remember a time when children mostly ran around outdoors and climbed trees, and laughed, shouted, poked, and teased one another, all face-to-face—these were formative experiences—rather than solemnly huddling in linear clusters and expressionlessly staring at devices. Some of us had our first romantic encounter in a real-world, face-to-face setting, when skin touched skin. Now, sadly, this is on the decline, replaced by explicit digital images that quickly circumnavigate the global Net.

That's the paradox of cyberspace. In some aspects, things are the same. Businessmen and -women still network to make money. Friends communicate. People still fall in love. Teens still obsess about appearance. Children are still playing together. But they are all alone—looking at their devices rather than one another. How will this shape the people they will become? And how, in turn, will they come to shape society?

We have no answer to that crucial question. This is the formidable yet unknown cyber effect. Because of this, we cannot stand by passively and watch the cyber social experiment play out. In human terms, to wait is to allow for the worst outcomes, many of which are unfolding before our eyes. Others can already be seen ahead, around the curve of time—and have been predicted. We need to get ahead of the process. Great societies, as I said in the prologue, are judged by how they treat their most vulnerable members, not by the cool new gadgets they can sell to the greatest number of people.

We are living through an exciting moment in history, when so much about life on earth is being transformed. But what is new is not always
good—and technology does not always mean progress.
We desperately need some balance in an era of hell-bent cyber-utopianism. In the prologue to this book, I compared this moment in time to the Enlightenment, hundreds of years ago, when there were changes of great magnitude in human knowledge, ability, awareness, and technology. Like the Industrial Revolution and other great eras of societal change, there is a brief moment of opportunity, a window, when it becomes clear where society might be heading—and there is still memory of what is being left behind. Those of us who remember the world and life before the Internet are a vital resource. We know what we used to have, who we used to be, and what our values were. We are the ones who can rise to the responsibility of directing and advising the adventure ahead.

It's like that moment before you go on a trip, and you are heading out the door with your luggage—and you check the house one more time to make sure you've got everything you need.

In human terms, do we have everything we need for this journey?

At this moment in time we can describe cyberspace as a place, separate from us, but very soon that distinction will become blurred. By the time we get to 2020, when we are alone and immersed in our smart homes and smarter cars, clad in our wearable technologies, our babies in captivity seats with iPads thrust in their visual field, our kids all wearing face-obscuring helmets, when our sense of self has fractured into a dozen different social-network platforms, when sex is something that requires logging in and a password, when we are competing for our lives with robots for jobs, and dark thoughts and forces have pervaded, syndicated, and colonized cyberspace, we might wish we'd paid more attention. As we set out on this journey, into the first quarter of the twenty-first century, what do we have now that we can't afford to lose?