Impact
“My own conclusion is that it shortened the war by not less than two years and probably by four years … we wouldn't in fact have been able to do the Normandy Landings, even if we had left the Mediterranean aside, until at the earliest 1946, probably a bit later.”
-Sir Harry Hinsley
British Intelligence Historian
Blog 4: Cryptography
Many systems today depend on cryptography that is assumed to be unbreakable with modern technology. However, imagine a world where that was no longer the case. Each time you purchase something on the internet, there would no longer be anything preventing someone from intercepting your information. The same would apply to sites such as Facebook, GMail, and even your banking or medical information. Anything you store on a computer could be accessed by anyone that wants to get it. Write about how you think that would affect our perception of technology and how we use it in our daily lives. Some thoughts to ponder:
- Would we stop shopping online, even if it is more convenient to do so?
- Would we be less likely to share information on social media sites?
- Would we insist that institutions such as banks or hospitals use only paper records, even though we understand that it will result in a rise in human errors?
- Are there uses of technology which are popular today that would disappear in this world? Or are there uses that would become much more common?
