As we put autonomous cars on the road, connect Alexas to our lights and our thermostats, put ill-protected Internet-connected video cameras on our houses, and conduct our financial lives over our cell phones, our vulnerabilities expand exponentially.
Interpretation
The increasing reliance on technology in daily life amplifies our vulnerabilities to security threats.
David E. Sanger's quote highlights the growing dependence on technology and the potential dangers that come with it. As we integrate more smart devices into our homes and make our lives increasingly digital, we simultaneously expose ourselves to greater risks, such as hacking and privacy breaches. The ease and convenience afforded by these technologies may come at a significant cost to our personal security.
In practice
During a tech conference discussing cybersecurity, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of secure practices.
Because our government has been so incompetent at protecting its highly sophisticated cyberweapons, those weapons have been stolen out of the electronic vaults of the National Security Agency and the C.I.A. and shot right back at us.
We have spent so much time worrying about a 'cyber Pearl Harbor,'' the attack that takes out the power grid, that we have focused far too little on the subtle manipulation of data that can mean that no election, medical record, or self-driving car can be truly trusted.
We could say we want the Web to reflect a vision of the world where everything is done democratically. To do that, we get computers to talk with each other in such a way as to promote that ideal.
We live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection.
The only way you multiply resources is with technology. To really affect poverty, energy, health, education, or anything else - there is no other way.
When I climb into my car, I enter my destination into a GPS device, whose spatial memory supplants my own. I have photographs to store the images I want to remember, books to store knowledge and now, thanks to Google, I rarely have to remember anything more than the right set of search terms to access humankind's collective memory.
Most of the good programmers do programming not because they expect to get paid or get adulation by the public, but because it is fun to program.
I'm interested in Linux because of the technology, and Linux wasn't started as any kind of rebellion against the 'evil Microsoft empire.'
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