How should we approach the development of cyber-policy and infrastructure given the “short arm” of predictive knowledge?
The ability of machines today has reached far beyond human capability. There are things that machines are capable of doing that human’s, as a collective, may never grow to understand. One of these things is predicting the future. Despite the few successful attempts by the Simpsons, or even the physic ability’s of Tarot readers, telling the future is something that not even human’s can perceive. However, machines can take part in Predictive knowledge. Predictive knowledge (PK) can be defined as a machine’s ability to properly predict future events based on previous knowledge and predictions.
However, despite how smart a machine may be. We will always live with the “short arm” of PK. The reason being? While the immediate future can be predicted, it’s impossible to understand the far future. Alfred Camus, a French philosopher, spent his entire life created the Theory of the Absurd. A theory which states that the world is unpredictable, and no matter what you do, you may die in the most absurd way- as proven by his own death.
Despite that, the “short arm” of PK can still be used to our advantage. When looking at the development of cyber policies and infrastructure, we can use a machine’s PK ability to help analyze how well a policy or infrastructure build will hold up against real world problems. Additionally, we can use the information provided from PK to strengthen and prepare policies and infrastructure build’s. Because PK uses past knowledge and events, it’s safe to say that the “short arm” PK events are accurate in a way of understanding a hacker’s or person’s future move in the cyber space.
All in all, I believe that PK should be considered in the development of new policies and infrastructures because of the usefulness it can provide in instances such as near future. However, I don’t believe it can be used to develop ideas for the further future as the world (more so the cyber space) is often unpredictable. We should continue to develop with what we currently understand, rather than building for something we cannot understand.