- How can you tell if your computer is safe?
- Describe three ways that computers have made the world safer and less safe.
If your computer is off, it is most likely safe. Beyond that, there is no sure way to tell if it is safe or not. The best hacks are ones that go unnoticed. Certainly, through cryptography, you can reduce the likelihood of your information or communications of getting hacked but as evident in current events, even the most secure systems have vulnerabilities. Computers over time have made the world safer and, in many ways, more dangerous, depending on how you look at it. The world is certainly more complex since the introduction of computers. Computers give us seemingly instantaneous access to almost unlimited information. They allow us to store that information for easy access by multiple people over wide geographical distances. Police can have a computer in their patrol car, allowing them to access legal information, on the spot, to determine if someone is wanted for a crime. Bad actors can use computers for almost the same reasons. They can gain access to private information, compile data on people to exploit later, introduce false information into databases, etc. This information can be transmitted over long distances so others can have access as well. Computers have certainly made life a whole lot easier in many ways. We don’t necessarily need giant libraries or storage facilities with a bunch of filing cabinets in them. We can just store it all on a hard drive. We don’t need a camping book to tell us what berries are edible; we just use an app on our phone computer. Computers have made the world way more complicated for sure. The convenience they provide comes with an almost equal amount of danger. Computers have brought people from all over the world together to invent medicines and treatments for disease. Computers have automated manufacturing allowing for safer factories. Computers monitor our electric grid, providing power to people who need it. For any good thing you can think of that a computer has made better, you could think of the same things as being bad. Computers could be used to automate war, to manufacture weapons of mass destruction, and compile dangerous information on people and organizations. Computers are certainly great for the evolution of humans; we can do things now that we would never have been able to do without them. Just like any tool, it depends on the person using it that makes it a tool for good or bad.