I have earned my living, most of my adult life, by teaching people about computer security. Viruses, Trojans and Worms, hackers and rootkits and all manner of things that sneak into your life for many an unknown reason.  Now I will be starting a new blog about it, starting here and now.

Things have gotten very strange in the current day. We run cloud applications and social networks. Our pocket telephones become TV stations and can unlock our cars (or even start the engine) from anyplace on earth. It is considered a radical departure for a CEO to demand that everyone show up for work. (rather than telecommute)  To paraphrase the Talking Heads, we’re living in the future. To quote the Firesign Theater:

“The future is fun, the future is fair, we already have won, We already BE THERE–Hello, and Welcome to the FUTURE!”

Now I have some gray hair, and grew up in a world where nobody owned a computer. So, from my perspective, life has been all about the growth and advancement of technology.  My earliest thoughts on technolody and science were brought about by two things. The first was popular media science fiction, where my future looked something like this:

And the second was a direct effect of Sputnik. Sputnik was a Russian satellite (NOT a spy satellite, but the first ever thing humans orbited around planet Earth in 1957) the Russkies beat us into space when I was only three years old, and we were told that we were experiencing a shortfall of trained scientists. Many things happened as a result of this. It was perceived as a strategic shortfall of massive proportions. One thing was, like any little kid who could read and do math, I was reassigned to a ‘gifted school’, and started receiving subscription science education kits in the mail (when I was about ten) I wish they were all as cool as this:

And, in their own way, they were. I learned about geology, and physics, and logic, and etomology (which taught us the basics of taxonomy when I was in fifth grade) Eventually we saw a computer, but that is a story for another day. This is the right hand path of my technological education. Stick around, there will be another chapter.