The Digital Big Bang

THE FUTURE

“We must move from threat prevention to the greater challenge of securing hyperconnectivity.”

Michael Xie, Fortinet

“There is virtually no area of cybersecurity that won't be transformed by AI and ML.”

Ken Xie, Fortinet

How is it that humans have gone from wooden spears, a few tens of thousands of years ago, to the ability to send people to the moon and back? What other animal has progressed at that pace? What is the implication of this pace of change for the digital big bang and cybersecurity?

Well before recorded human history, something happened to the human brain. Many scientists believe that mutations, either random or caused by the environment, changed our brain's physiology, opening the door for us to communicate with one another much more robustly and to think more abstractly. Or it could have been the opposite: that the ability to communicate and think abstractly grew to a tipping point, accelerating a change in our brain's physiology. Either way, our future was forever changed.

The digital big bang has and will continue to serve as an analogous accelerant, driving our future at a breathtaking pace. While some fear the future simply because it's unknown, others worry that technologies will overtake people—that cyborgs will emerge and outpace the development of the human brain's marvelous physiology. But this is a book about science, not fear. We ...