Future Crimes are Terrifying

We all wanted to live in the future people, and now that we’re here we are going to have to deal with the fact that we didn’t arrive here alone. As has always happened throughout the ages, criminals came with us. But perhaps for the first time in history, we are now at a point where we as a populace are wholly dependent upon a technology that villians fundamentally understand better than we do. Author, futurist, and security expert Marc Goodman drags this disturbing truth into the harsh light in his book Future Crimes – and it scared the bejeezus out of us.

That’s not to say that Goodman doesn’t present positive steps forward or solutions to our collective level of screwed, but the eye opening facts in Future Crimes are the anecdotes and statistics about just how naive we are about all our connected devices. Having spent his career in cybercrime for everyone from the LAPD to Interpol, Goodman certainly knows what he’s talking about. In addition to his excellent TED Talk, he has lectured around the world and even teaches at the prestigious Silicon Valley Singularity University. He knows what he’s talking about is what I’m saying here. So when he says that we are in danger of losing the race to “own” our technology, we should probably listen up.

Reading this book, you’ll see stories of technology crimes you’re familiar with (the Target data breach for example) and others honestly too horrible to make the nightly news (like the international online auctioning of child rape). It’s these kinds of distributed crimes that we now have to deal with, and our own lax attitude towards mobile and connected devices is largely at fault. Future Crimes isn’t all doom and gloom however. Not only does a reading of this book make you want to immediately drop everything and become a cybercriminal (Don’t. You will get caught.), but Goodman offers up solutions we can take as individuals, as well as collectively at the government level.

We don’t a review a lot books here on FactoryTwoFour, and I’m loathe to call Future Crimes or any other book a “must read,” but let’s just say I strongly encourage you to pick this one up and read for yourself both the hidden world we are living in, and the one we could very well inhabit if we are not careful.