Cyber Armageddon
By 2025, companies around the world are all expected to use cloud technology in some way, with 85% of business applications predicted to be based on it.
Thomas Mesenbourg mentions three components of digital economy, namely infrastructure, e-business, and e-commerce.
On the outset, it looks like it is very good for the small business because it does not have an entry barrier and anyone with a small to no investment can get in it and thrive.
It also seems convenient because shoppers can buy whatever, whenever. However, everything in this world comes with a side effect. Like life of any form comes with a death guarantee. Let’s see how evolution of technology can destroy civilization in just a few years.
1. Monopoly
Amazon has cornered the market for online sales, meaning many firms must go through the Amazon marketplace to reach consumers who go to Amazon out of habit.
Similarly, Google and Facebook have all developed very strong brand loyalty and market share in their respective markets. This has made a few tech giants very profitable.
As long as there are big companies, the smaller ones can never fully thrive. Reason being the moment they start to pose a threat; big brother will gobble it. Money for them is never an issue.
Here are some companies Google owns by acquisition:
Nest, Looker, Waze, Pointy, AppSheet, Fitbit, Socratic, Elastifile, Alooma, LaunchKit, Verily, Deep Mind, Calico, Sidewalk Labs.
2. Widening gaps between the rich and the poor
As the digital economy gets more and more popular, the rich get even richer. Let me explain how. Let’s say Mark earns $1000 a week and after all the expenses, he is left with $300. So instead of investing that money, Mark decides to subscribe to Netflix, buy random products on Amazon and at the same time also spend $200 during the weekend stroll to the pub.
So instead of saving $300, he ends up overspending $200 buying unnecessary products with services like afterpay or a credit card and gets into a debt cycle making the banks and lenders richer by some dollars every week.
Now this might sound a solitary example, but the world is full of Marks and people like him who are not only getting deeper and deeper into debt but accelerating the divide between the rich and the poor.
3. Making the earth a heavier place
Around 40–50% of people are now working from home. This means that in a few years, there will be about 20–40% of people who will transition from being healthy to being overweight.
Whether that results in health problems or not is premature to say but digital economy has pushed you in that direction. And believe me, in the last 3 years, I have seen people go from fat to fatter.
Work from home has eliminated at least 2 hours of exercise from our daily lives, not to mention the walking we do in the office itself.
4. End of office culture
Never in my life had I ever thought that the world will turn out to be so boring one day. The thing I find very funny is that everyone defines humans as social animals but more than half of them want to work from home and do so.
I wonder when people will have the honesty and the guts to say that they only work for money and not things like having an extended family or job satisfaction. There is no harm in saying so but pretending to be who you are not is a crime.
Most people’s lives are completely boring. The office adds a bit of color to their otherwise drab living. But lo behold, they want to even abandon that. What a shame.
The thing about people is that they do not live for 60, 70, 80, or 100 years. After they start work, they live 1 year over and over again. And if they start to work from home, they will live 1 day over and over again.
5. Hack You!
Things are going to get much worse. This is the beginning. Recently, Optus got hacked and about 2 million customer data was stolen. Then there is news that Medibank has also lost a 100 or so personal data.
The politicians are now suddenly showing their worth by trying to get mileage out of this occurrence by passing legislation that could penalize the companies by millions of dollars if a breach like this was to happen post the law is formed.
I personally believe no company lets a hacker get in by developing a wall that is penetrable. It is just that the hackers outsmart the programmers at the companies. So having a legislation like this is unfair on the companies because there can never be a program that cannot be broken.
Let’s not forget the first major company to be hacked was ABS in 2016 when the census was being conducted. I wonder who has taken the blame for that?
Loss of money is a huge loss but the real threat will come when the hackers start taking control of airports, busy railway stations or even hospitals. We thought all this only happened in the movies.
No more! Get ready, the Cyber Armageddon is at the door.
People haven’t seen the sinister side of technology. I am no expert and I do not understand the intricacies of cyber security. But I can say one thing for sure. It is going to be a pandemic; a cyber pandemic so large, we just cannot imagine.
This time the antidote is not going to work because the virus is customized. It has as many variants as there are hackers in the world.
John Khalkho: CEO — Dolores Education