I stumbled across this documentary about cities of the future. For those who hasn’t seen it yet, it is highly recommend. It will take only 43:29 minutes of your time. Believe me, it is worth looking at. After you are ready, come back here and read along.

It is quite exciting to look into stuff that may happen in the future. This documentary, in particular, is interesting because it depicts what will happen when our highly computerized world crashes and burns. Everything is so much dependent on IT security and I am not sure whether people realize it.

The future will be as much bright, easy and cool as dangerous, open and susceptible to manipulation. The building blocks of this future are here today and we are constantly proving that they are fragile. Very often, I wonder whether we ever going to solve some of the fundamental problems in IT security. The more I think about it, the more pessimistic I become. If there’s anything that I’ve learned from history, it’s that the situation gets progressively worse when more complexities are introduced. In a world where everything is highly integrated, you can only imagine the power that will be given to individuals that have some basic understandings of IT and a lot of curiosity. Governments and corporations don’t like that, although the future is somehow inevitable.

Even today, my world is highly dependent on technology. It is not because I am directly involved into this world, but it is because some things make more sense when they are done through computers. For example, grocery shopping. It is so much easier to do it on-line. Although I do understand the dangers of sharing credit card details and personal information, the convenience is something that very often wins over. After all, none leaves forever. If my fridge can perform the grocery shopping for me, I will be absolutely happy to take the risk.

That of course, is something I believe a lot of people are also ready to do. They are ready to make small compromises in order to make small advances and build better life. Although nobody likes being followed by CCTV cameras, the truth is that in certain cases, they do help to catch the bad guys. I still don’t like CCTVs because they can be abused by those who can control them that includes the attackers/bad guys too.

Very often I try to imagine how that future will be build and I often fall back to the idea of using web technologies. Don’t get me wrong, there will be a lot of wifi/wifimax/bluetooth going on but I tend to believe that web technologies are somehow universal. Why? Well, they are very simple in nature and it has been proven that they can integrated to build complex systems.

One of the reasons why pdp, a hardcore C/C++ coder, got into Python and moved into JavaScript, is because with the time I had realised that web technologies are reused everywhere. We like to reuse stuff. The web is everywhere, from the browser at your desktop to your phone’s chrome inside your pocket. It just makes sense. By the time I realised it, I was sucked into the Web App Sec world. Even if web technology is not used as much as I tend to believe, that will never stop my curiosity. Don’t restrict yourself into one thing only, keep looking and mostly do whatever interests you most. Forget what people tell you!

Anyway, I hope that you enjoy the documentary. I did. In 2057 I will be 70. Will I be around till then? I don’t know. I hope so. It will be cool to see everything expanding on front my eyes. That I believe, is a good enough reason to get back into shape and start healthier life-style.