Big Picture Science Show: “What the Hack”

 

ENCORE

A computer virus that bombards you with pop-up ads is one thing. A computer virus that shuts down a city’s electric grid is another. Welcome to the new generation of cybercrime. Discover what it will take to protect our power, communication and transportation systems as scientists try to stay ahead of hackers in an ever-escalating game of cat and mouse.

The expert who helped decipher the centrifuge-destroying Stuxnet virus tells us what he thinks is next. Also convenience vs. vulnerability as we connect to the Internet of Everything. And, the journalist who wrote that Google was “making us stupid,” says automation is extracting an even higher toll: we’re losing basic skills. Such as how to fly airplanes.

Guests:

• Ray Sims – Computer Technician, Computer Courage, Berkeley, California
• Eric Chien – Technical Director of Security Technology and Response, Symantec
• Paul Jacobs – Chairman and CEO of Qualcomm
• Shankar Sastry – Dean of the College of Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, director of TRUST
• Nicholas Carr – Author of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains and the forthcoming “The Glass Cage”. His article, “The Great Forgetting,” is in the November 2013 issue of The Atlantic.

First released November 11, 2013.

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Big Picture Science Show