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Technology & the Future

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Tools and Weapons summary

Name: Tools and Weapons
Rating: 4.1 (95 reviews)
Author: Brad Smith and Carol Ann Browne

Brad Smith Carol Ann Browne

The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age

4.1 (95 ratings)

26 mins

Brief summary

Tools and Weapons by Brad Smith and Carol Ann Browne is an insightful look at the intersection of technology and society, covering key issues like privacy, cybersecurity, and digital ethics. It offers actionable insights for individuals and organizations alike on how we can better navigate the ever-evolving tech landscape.

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Artificial Intelligence

Table of Contents

Tools and Weapons
Summary of 8 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 8

What’s in it for me? Get an insider’s take on the threats and promises of the digital age.

Ever feel like things are moving too fast? That the dizzying rush of technological innovation is out of control? That we should pause a moment before we embrace a world where vehicles drive themselves, shadowy data firms can swing elections, and AI can predict whether or not someone will turn into a criminal? You’re not alone. Authors Brad Smith and Carol Ann Browne of Microsoft might just agree with you. Not in the sense that we should retreat to some sort of pre-technological cave, but just that we need to get a handle on things.

To do so, governments and big tech corporations need to collaborate intelligently. By working together, they can ensure that the digital revolution brings with it the kind of technologies we urgently need: those that help us tackle our great collective challenges and make life easier for many. If they don’t work together, then we face a much darker timeline – one in which hackers can shut down hospitals, or hostile-state actors can use the internet to interfere with our democratic process.

The following blinks take a look into the state of technology today and give us a window into a future world – which could be terrifying or wonderful, depending on how we act now.

Along the way, you’ll find out

why the data cloud is more like a fortress than a real cloud;
what an eighteenth-century British MP and Edward Snowden have in common; and
how a Stasi prison taught Microsoft a valuable lesson.

Data has always been an integral part of human civilization.

We’ve always relied on data. All human civilizations have passed information down from one generation to the next. Without being able to record our methods, we wouldn’t have been able to make progress.

Without the scrolls of antiquity, our great architectural techniques wouldn’t have developed over centuries, mathematical solutions wouldn’t have traveled from one mind to the next, and military strategies wouldn’t have made it from Caesar’s battlefields to Napoleon’s.

Then, when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, there was something of a data explosion. As more individuals gained access to the achievements of humankind through the printed word, a democratic revolution began. This had momentous consequences for religion, politics and cultural life.

Later, the acceleration of commerce in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries meant an exponential increase in the amount of data in the world. By the mid-twentieth century, there were filing cabinets overflowing with data in every organization, for every imaginable purpose.

And today, through digitization, we store a quantity of data inconceivable at any other moment in history. We call this digital architecture the cloud.

And though this word brings to mind a fluffy, soft cumulus floating above us, the reality is more like a fortress. The cloud has a very definite physical reality. Every time you look something up on your mobile device, you are pulling a piece of information from a gigantic data center.

These are modern marvels that almost nobody gets to see. Take the one in Quincy – a tiny town about 150 miles east of Seattle. Here, there are two campuses with more than 20 huge, nondescript buildings. Each building is the size of a football field and can comfortably house two large commercial airplanes.

At the heart of each of these buildings is a computer center, where thousands of servers are lined up in long racks. Somewhere, in one of these buildings, each of us will have our own digital file. In one of these humming, cavernous rooms, there are our photographs, private emails and bank account details.

Even more remarkable is the fact that each data center has an exact double, with another set of buildings, just like the one in Quincy, somewhere else. This way, if there’s a natural or humanmade disaster, our data – our memories, messages, private details – will be kept safe.

Edward Snowden reignited the old question of privacy for the twenty-first century.

On 6 June 2013, the head of Microsoft’s public communications team, Dominic Carr, received an email whose contents would shock him, and then the world.

The email, from a Guardian journalist, claimed that the US government’s National Security Agency (NSA) had been accessing private user data, phone records and other information belonging to millions of people, including foreign leaders around the world.

Terrorist attacks forced tech companies to clarify their privacy policies.

As the twenty-first century unfolded, terrorist attacks became a worryingly frequent occurrence.

At first, the implications for new digital technologies weren’t obvious. 9/11, for instance, took place in a world that wasn’t yet hooked on social media, a world of fax machines rather than smartphones.

Differences in culture and history impact how different countries handle the question of data privacy.

Many of the tech innovations of the twenty-first century were developed in Silicon Valley in California. That means that they were designed with a certain cultural perspective in a country that takes freedom for granted. But what happens when this collides with different perspectives?

One example illustrates this well.

The world has yet to wake up to the full implications of cyberwar.

On 12 May 2017, Patrick Ward, the owner of an ice cream business, was wheeled into a surgical prep room at St Bartholomew's hospital in central London. He’d traveled three hours up to the capital from a small village in southern England for the crucial heart surgery that he’d waited two years to undergo. He lay on a gurney, wired up to monitors, with his chest shaved. A surgeon’s assistant appeared and told him that he’d have just a few more minutes to wait.

He waited. Hours passed. Then, a doctor flung open the doors of the prep room and informed him that he wouldn’t be able to have his surgery, as the hospital’s computers were all down.

Social media platforms have been used to sow discord in modern democracies in a way that mirrors history.

In its infancy, the internet seemed like a good way to connect the world and bring us closer, but in recent years we’ve seen its shadowy side.

Take the divisive 2016 US election, where social media platforms were used to disseminate “fake news.”

AI has thrown up some complex problems.

Artificial Intelligence: what’s the first thing that comes to mind? The dark techno score and scanner gaze of The Terminator? R2D2? The AI romance in the film Her? The truth is, we’re surrounded by AI already: your smartphone learns about you as you use it, for instance.

So, what should concern us about AI today?

New technologies can be used constructively, but joined-up thinking is required.

A tool can be used for good or evil. With a broom, you can sweep a kitchen floor or smash someone over the head. The same applies to information technology.

Consider these recent innovations:

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What is Tools and Weapons about?

Tools and Weapons (2019) outlines the many different ways in which digital technology can both empower and endanger us. As Microsoft insiders, Brad Smith and Carol Ann Browne offer unique insight into the digital present and the future we face, from advanced AI to devastating cyberwarfare. Here they argue for a world where big tech firms and governments collaborate to ensure that the future is better for all of us.

Tools and Weapons Review

Tools and Weapons (2019) by Brad Smith and Carol Ann Browne is a thought-provoking exploration of the role of technology in today's society and the ethical challenges it presents. Here's why this book is worth reading:

With insider perspectives from two Microsoft executives, it provides unique insights into the tech industry and its impact on our lives.
It delves into complex issues such as cybersecurity, privacy, and AI, offering a balanced view and prompting readers to consider the implications of these technologies.
Packed with real-world examples and personal stories, the book brings these topics to life and ensures that the content is never dull or dry.

Who should read Tools and Weapons?

Anyone interested in how technology shapes our lives
Tech-heads and nerds
Businesspeople getting to grips with a digital future

About the Author

Brad Smith is the president of Microsoft, leading the company’s work on all of its key issues, such as cybersecurity, AI and human rights. The New York Times called him “a de facto ambassador for the technology industry at large.” Carol Ann Browne is senior director of communications and external relations at Microsoft. Along with Smith, she writes the Today in Technology blog.

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