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posted by martyb on Thursday August 23 2018, @03:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the will-be-a-bit-different dept.

Intel conducted a survey of 1,000 consumers and 102 "tech elites"* to celebrate the 50th year of the company's existence:

Americans are excited about the future potential of technology, but 40 percent believe emerging technologies will introduce as many new problems as solutions in the next 50 years. This finding comes from Intel's "Next 50" Study of 1,000 consumers, conducted with research firm PSB, to determine prevailing perceptions about the future of technology.

"Emerging technologies have the potential to transform many aspects of our everyday life," said Genevieve Bell, director of the 3A Institute, Florence Violet McKenzie Chair and distinguished professor at the Australian National University, and a vice president and senior fellow at Intel. "Studies like this remind us about the diversity of human experience. When we talk about the future of innovation, we're talking about a range of ideas, technologies and attitudes that will impact our lives in important ways."

Even as consumers anticipate new technologies, they remain most excited about those that are most familiar. The survey revealed that consumers expect to rely most on smartphones (87 percent) in the future. Consumers also ranked PCs (84 percent) and smart home technology (84 percent) among the most important technologies in the next 50 years.

I thought the PC was dying.

Some highlights from the PDF include: much more excitement (56-71%) about "smart home technology" than gene therapy (43-55%) (page 10), little excitement (10-14%) over full automation of jobs forcing governments to issue a universal basic income (page 13), fathers being much more excited about "AI" than mothers (page 14), and Intel highlighting the worry of social isolation caused by technology when the top concern was robots and AI destroying jobs (page 24).

*All technology elites are aged 25 years or older with at least a college education, have a household income of at least $100,000 and follow news about technology closely.


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  • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday August 23 2018, @07:39PM (4 children)

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 23 2018, @07:39PM (#725372) Journal

    the only real solution is not to have them.

    I'd say that there's a fix for such issues, and I hope you'll correct me where I'm wrong.

    Management Engine problem fix: Stop using them. Use ARM/PowerPC/RISC V/etc. processors until the strong-arm-rootkit vendors AMD and Intel stop using them.

    Operating system fix: Don't use Windows 10 or any similar operating system. Only use operating systems that do not presume to control nor take ownership of your data and decisions until Windows is one like that (which will probably be the GNU Windows GPL3+ edition, but I digress...).

    Smart home/assistant fix: Don't use assistants that send all commands to a home base; focus instead on developing voice recognition technology that can run locally. The commands on the Starship Enterprise/Voyager/Etc. didn't get sent back to Federation Voice Processing Contractors Inc. located adjacent to NSA headquarters; they were processed by the computer right there on ship. Same should apply for a "smart" home, otherwise it's not very smart.

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  • (Score: 2) by vux984 on Friday August 24 2018, @12:05AM (3 children)

    by vux984 (5045) on Friday August 24 2018, @12:05AM (#725486)

    I think your suggestions are a step in the right direction, but what would such a product look like?

    Imagine an internet connected toaster with a microphone so you could set the toast darkness by voice; and a camera so it can burn your face onto your toast because hey, dumb gimmicks sell -- lets say if used an ARM cpu running bsd or linux that processed the commands locally, and it can send me an SMS, email, and 3 other social media notification APIs or some-such when my toast is ready.

    It's STILL an off the shelf internet-of-things appliance with a microphone and camera that will be sitting in kitchens by the thousands or millions long after the manufacturer has discontinued it, and gotten out of toasters entirely. And then some flaw in that toaster is going to come to light, they'll get pwned by the thousands... and they'll still be an internet connected camera and microphone.

    What then? Am I going to be on some forum keeping an eye out for community supported security patches for my toaster? Really? For every doohickey and gizmo in my home? Ugh. That's awful.

    Of course, yes, that's a lot better than an amazon dot or whatever that's pwned by the corporation, and in turn the NSA or whatever, before you even took it out of the shrink wrap, plus any vulnerabilities that get discovered later... but its still awful.

    • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday August 24 2018, @01:54AM

      by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 24 2018, @01:54AM (#725532) Journal

      the only real solution is not to have them.

      I'd say that there's a fix for such issues, and I hope you'll correct me where I'm wrong.

      What then? Am I going to be on some forum keeping an eye out for community supported security patches for my toaster? Really? For every doohickey and gizmo in my home?

      You are right. Although the "fixes" I mention could make the products not instantly defective-by-design, they will still be eventually-defective-by-design.

    • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday August 24 2018, @03:28PM (1 child)

      by Freeman (732) on Friday August 24 2018, @03:28PM (#725846) Journal

      There's Raspberry Pi. It's ARM, running Linux, and can be used for various IOT kinds of projects.

      --
      Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by vux984 on Friday August 24 2018, @04:25PM

        by vux984 (5045) on Friday August 24 2018, @04:25PM (#725887)

        Yeah, for DIY hobbyist projects, sure a raspberry pi is a wonderful thing.

        But if you base a an iot appliance off the pi, and sell it by the thousands, and you attach a mic and camera to it then its likely going to get pwned eventually.

        Basically, for anything appliance-like (ie IoT) related to the security or privacy of your home, if it has a camera and mic to it, or it controls access to your home (door locks) it shouldn't be attached to the internet.

        On the flip side, a voice controlled device that isn't attached to the internet is fine. You want a voice activated toaster... fine, but ideally don't make it an internet connected toaster, or at most make it a LAN connected toaster that's firewalled from communicating with the internet in both directions; and this kind of functionality works for the DIY enthusiast who is willing to and able to manage their own network and set it up and troubleshoot it. But you can't really mass market such a thing -- for mass market it needs to be easier to use and that's incompatible with being secure.

        Finally, your smartphone, your laptop etc. Is a compromise -- that you should be actively aware of, unlike an IoT device. So you should prefer cameras with physical lens covers; and mics with physical off switches or that can be disconnected where possible. You should keep them up to date with security patches, and running supported software you trust. You should keep them away from secure areas or private conversations. etc. Its reasonable to 'manage' this for laptops and phones.

        But it's untenable to do this for every light switch, door knob, and gizmo in your life.