Dealing With the Dark Side of Technology

The Roman orator Cicero said, “The aim of writing is not simply to be understood, but to make it impossible to be misunderstood.” That, with a slight twist, should be the guideline for all Internet development: The aim of Internet tools and technology is not to be used, but to make it impossible to be misused.

When Ray Tomlinson created email back in 1971, his vision of written electronic communication did not include all of today’s spam messages. When the developers at Microsoft added macros to Word they were thinking about saving people time, not introducing viruses to people’s PCs.

Finish reading this article at Internet Evolution.