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Comment by runn1ng | Hacker News Reader

I will be repeating a notion I read on YCombinator elsewhere - but I, too, find it incredibly cool that we live in a time when wars are fought online like that.

We have online revolutionaries anarchists and REAL nation-wide revolutions, started on online networks (talking about Arabic Spring here); we got FBI agents, looking through IP addresses on IRC networks to catch a small group of bragging attackers; we got invisible army of Chinese hackers that noone knows who they are, only that they are really good; some unknown entity making amazingly well done and thought out trojan like stuxnet and now duqu, that seems to be right from pages of some hyperbolic comic book; and, last but not the least, the Russian mafia lords employing Zeus trojans and whatnot to make botnets that mine bitcoin, purely digital currency.

It's an amazing world we live in. Can't wait what the future will bring.

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You seem to be pretty enthusiastic about rather worrying and even disturbing developments. This is not a science fiction novel, this is real life. One day it is Israeli hackers destroying Iranian centrifuges, perhaps the next day it will be nuclear reactor facilities that are sent into meltdowns.

...I guess some guys just want to watch the world burn.

...more likely an embattled people facing an existential threat resort to any means possible to slow down and thwart the efforts of an enemy developing a doomsday weapon.

As I think about it, you are probably right.

And yet, I can't help myself but watch in fascination as all this happens. Maybe it's because this time, the war is fought with means and tools I understand (if only a little)? Maybe.

Maybe it has something to do with the morbid fascination people have with anything destructive - the World War II books and movies are still sold like cakes, while noone actually wants to repeat the world war.

I, for one, appreciate your enthusiasm. I mean, it's just amazing to look at how far man has advanced from just 100 years ago.

And for me, it's definitely not about the destruction. I just think it's awesome to realize just what humans are capable of. Now, humans are also capable of some ridiculously destructive things. But the problem with @adriand's point of view is that it's as if there's something to be lost from all of Man's destruction. When really, what significance does Earth have in the Universe anyway?

It's pretty significant to us, because we're here :) Seriously, from our point of view, including adriand's, there is something to be lost from Mankind's destruction because it would be the end of our entire species. From the perspective of the universe as a whole, it may not be significant, but it seems eminently sensible for humans to be concerned about it.

Also, it is possible that Earth is significant to the universe because it's the only place where intelligent life has arisen. I don't expect that this is actually the case, but so far we have no evidence to the contrary, and if it were true it would be tragic if we wiped ourselves out by playing with virii and nuclear technology.

500 years ago all human settlements on Earth had always been agrarian economies with different levels of development but primitive nonetheless, until the industrial revolution started.

What if it had never happened? Now we now there were previous attempts at industry, like steam engines and chemistry, but there was always a war, a drought or some other disaster that destroyed the framework where said developments were made, and sometimes even killed the people making them (Archimedes for example).

What if the universe is just like that? what if we're the most advanced species and all the aliens out there are either animals or still haven't even figured out how to build clocks or engines?

If that's the case then all the knowledge that ever existed would die with us.

Maybe so, likely though this is what the erosion of existing power structures looks like first hand. I think we should just be thankful it is relatively peaceful compared to the natural order of such events historically speaking.

Something doesn't have to be not-a-train-wreck to be utterly fascinating. Quite the opposite, sometimes.

It's quite likely that humans need conflict in their lives to feel complete. The area of evolutionary psychology points strongly in that direction as does a subjective observation of our history.

I find online wars to be much more favorable than actual bloodshed. Even an occasional meltdown would be much less disastrous than real life conflict.

>perhaps the next day it will be nuclear reactor facilities that are sent into meltdowns.

Considering some scientists were fearful that Stuxnet would cause a mini Chernobyl-like disaster, we can safety say that's not an unlikely scenario.

http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-01-17/news/27087828_1_r...

Compared to the ways people used to settle their differences in the days when war wasn't online, I also am enthusiastic about these developments.

I find this theory by a commenter on the original Kaspersky blog post very interesting. I certainly don't really have the knowledge to judge if it has any merits, but I still find it amusing nonetheless.

http://www.securelist.com/en/blog/667/The_Mystery_of_the_Duq...

It's very cool from a geek / technological point of view but I can't help but think that non-lifesaving technology ultimately brings us little good, if you look at the big picture.

"Lifesaving" is a pretty nebulous concept. Does a plow which enables higher crop yields and thus less starvation constitute as life saving? Or a weather satellite, which allows prediction of rain patterns and more efficient irrigation usage? Modern technology is all interconnected, and only a few extreme leaf nodes could be unambiguously declared non-life saving.

I'd consider those examples as life-saving, yes. I was thinking more of yet another 'social' website that receives millions of dollars of funding.

Yes, we live in the cyberpunk future.

"High tech meets low life".

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