Binary Opposition: Why hackers hack
Life has many ups and downs. As I experience the transit of time, I realise that my reactions to the things life throws at me have changed immensely. These days, I’m more likely to roll with the punches. As teenagers, we feel intensely. Everything is new. We are emerging from a world where all serious decisions affecting life’s trajectory are made by our parents, for better or for worse. They are beyond our control. Life is punctuated by the timetables of institutions that exist in a world set to a clock in London.
As adults, we emerge into a world of our making. Will we abide by the set of institutions aligned to the London clock? Or could we, by harnessing the power of our imaginations, self-will and sheer determination, break free from the tick-tock staccato restraints of a clock on another continent, and set sail for an island of freedom and independence?
What is it in the makeup of global citizens that determines whether one is purely altruistic in one’s motivation, or conversely, motivated by malice? Could this be genetically pre-determined? Or is it in response to our environment? Is there a pivotal moment that determines which side we veer towards?
I put these questions out there because I awoke to see that the price of gold is rising; The Donald can’t pay his Secret Service and I’m contemplating all the money spent on global warmongering and citizen protection. Not to mention, Enigma just got hacked $500,000 – can anyone be truly safe?
What if we didn’t need to be protected, because everyone was good? Would there then be gradations of goodness – a validator for virtue? Would we be weighed and found wanting?
I put this question because every investment action carries a risk – more so in “invisible”, non-tangible assets like cryptocurrencies. If there were no risk of being hacked, there would be much less risk in investment. It seems as if, while I am contemplating putting the power of my intellect into assessing the best options for my hard-earned, post-tax dollars, someone else has been contemplating freedom from institutions – and deciding that the best returns on their investment of Meridian-measured time is hacking into the spoils of someone else’s freedom dreams.
So it comes back to the Darwinian paradigm - survival of the fittest. We are at once binary beings – at odds with ourselves and our world.
Invest at your peril. Keep your wits about you and watch out for the snake in the grass!
first commandment of the Hacker's Bible:
-Everything created by the human-being, can be hacked by the human-being
;)
Yes, I guess that is true. Thinking of hack-proof systems, even though Maidsafe Coin is talking about a truly decentralised computer network system that could, in theory, replace the internet one day (if people were so inclined), what can be dispersed can be drawn back together through the reverse process, especially things done digitally - because it has a digital footprint, no matter how much they deny it, or refuse to acknowledge it is true. You could say Maidsafe Coin is very great waste of time to produce something no-one wants in that particular form.
the real hack-proof system should be offline :)
everything connected to any network - potentially unsafe
I wrote this post because all investment in cryptocurrency is entered against a fear of losing everything because you can't actually see your assets. They are intangible. They are locked into a blockchain somewhere, to which you have a private key. The risk of being hacked is very real, as is the risk of having your funds in an exchange which could go broke, or meet some other undesirable fate, or you could just get scammed. This post was written with this in mind. I am aware of the binary opposition. I was thinking about Steem as an altruistically motivated enterprise. But against what do we measure altruism, except its opposite - greed. So hackers wouldn't exist without victims. This article was about the awareness of dichotomy in nature. I am intrinsically drawn to the positive side of the equation. Being an empath, if I cause pain, I will feel that pain more keenly than the person I've upset, so I try to avoid conflict or occasions for causing pain to others. I tried to go back in time and rename the title of this, my first piece, in case it gave the wrong impression of me and my motivations, but found I could no longer edit it. The title is a bit of a misnomer. I just like to step into the shoes of others and see the world through their eyes in order to gauge their motivation. It helps me understand myself better. I tend to be naive and cause myself grief by underestimating others. Have a nice day, anyone who reads this ambered evocation - ambered because its been set in the latter day equivalent - a blockchain.