Experiments in Cyberspace

Protection is not confined to your bedroom or another convenient place as this year's Valentine's Day approaches. Those old, sorry mature enough to remember the havoc caused by the cute "I Love You" and "Love Letter" viruses will sadly remember. How time flies, doesn't it? The damages had exceeded 6 billion dollars, then. You can of course say "it's worth it," or a similar cliche but better be protected rather than sorry. Possible names for these lovely bugs to reappear on or around this naughty day of February might be "You are beautiful", "From me to you", "I wanna hold your hand", "Only you", "Love at first sight", "I am addicted to you", "Our song", "Save the last dance for me", "Helter Skelter" (O.K., this one's a joke)... But you get the drill. Be vewy vewy careful!

Complexity (the number of ways-hows-and-whys a system can act) may become an anachronism as novel research demystifies consciousness reducing human complexity to a deterministic system. Biomachines that bypass time consuming conscious activity ultimately may be fielded by the DOD. The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) is already working towards this end. Through its Neurotechnology for Intelligence Analysts program, it has probed brain signals triggered when an analyst sees something interesting in a satellite image. The analyst's brain registers the discovery long before the analyst becomes cognitively aware of it. "The brain can signal the discovery three times faster than the analyst can respond... My goal is to use these technologies to harness the speed of thought... I know it's possible, especially if we confront these challenges not just as problems of biology and neuroscience but problems of physics, math, materials science and microtechnology....