OPPapers.com

Digital Technology

As digital technology has advanced over the past 50-odd years with a force unprecedented in history, governments, businesses and people around the world have been affected immeasurably. The already enormous and still growing capacities for electronic storage, transmission and rapid manipulation of data changed the modern landscape virtually overnight, making the world unrecognizable in many ways to those of earlier generations. Perhaps with some of the bias that is part of the older generations, it is taken for granted that the changes have included substantial benefits. However, such fundamental restructuring in society also results in certain disadvantages, on all levels. As we begin to rely on this technology more and more, we in fact become more vulnerable. A potential example of how damaging this reliability can be may become most evident in the next several months as we approach ever closer to the dreaded Y2K. This is a problem that resulted from human laziness and greed. However, it was not meant to be malevolent. Increased opportunities for the industrious to be more productive also allows the criminal mind new avenues for malevolence. The explosion of the world of information technologies has a negative side: it has opened the door to antisocial and criminal behavior in ways that would never have previously been possible. Computer systems offer some new and highly sophisticated opportunities for law breaking, and they create the potential to commit traditional types of crimes in non-traditional ways. In addition to suffering the economic consequences of computer crime, society relies on computerized systems for almost everything in life, from air, train and bus traffic control to medical service coordination and national security. Even a small glitch in the operation of these systems can put human lives in danger. Society's dependence on computer systems, therefore, has a profound human dimension. The rapid transnational expansion of large-scale computer...