Friday, June 19, 2009

Hacking

Yesterday late night I didn't know what to do, so I started reading about "Social Engineering", quite an interesting topic it is. I learnt that not just computer systems but also any other system or for that matter every system is hackable. The best and most intriguing part of Social Engineering is that the victims themselves give away supposedly innocuous, non-vital information to a Social Engineer (disguised as someone else) and are happy to do so! (Ref book: The Art of Deception, Controlling Human Element of Security)
Today morning I read about pain being a moral good (http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/08/is-pain-a-moral-good). Here it is argued that pain is an important part of life, so natural pain should not be inhibited, but we humans have successfully hacked into secrets of our body and devised a drug (anaesthesia) to nullify sensation of pain!
We humans have been hacking a lot into nature and its secrets, but in the process disturbing its balance and defacing it... we are good at hacking into but not so proper at coming out without inflicting any damage.
Can we say that when a person falls in love, the person whom a person falls for has unknowingly hacked into this person's system. Sounds stupid, isn't it?

5 comments:

Aniket said...

Here I am, sitting in AC all day when all of Hyderabad is sweating in the sweltering heat outside. Someone has hacked nature and made it suitable for me. In the process, he has inadvertently damaged a part of the system (in this case the damage manifests itself in the form of global warming which is a result of all the coal burnt to provide the electricity which powers the ACs I sit in.)

Man has learnt to hack nature, and every hacking results in further damage to the system, making it all the more unlivable, thereby increasing the need for further hacking. As a result of all the ACs, global warming happens which calls for more extensive and intensive use of ACs.

Nobody would step out of their comfort zones and take the pain required to take a corrective action, while the situation just goes on degrading. I wonder for how long can it continue...

Abhishek said...

@Aniket: thanks for this discussion... some humans are bad hackers of nature, either because they're dumb or they just don't care! :D :P

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Unknown said...

i once read an article about a girl who couldn't feel pain. it was a genetic disorder, the name i forget. now, if you look at it superficially, it sounds like a pain-free life, something most ppl aim to live. but delve deeper and you will know that pain has its advantages too. this kid would chew her lip in her sleep and wouldn't know until her mother saw the blood. she would burn herself critically and still smile. so, pain, like every other emotion, is an integral part of existence. it does help unravel some secrets that happiness never can.

Abhishek said...

@Prachee: Exactly, pain is an important part of our being. Pain is a signal that indicates something's wrong... in one of House's episodes a girl has CIPA (she can't feel pain), similar to the girl in the article you read... and that girl had to take care of so many other things, just to make sure she isn't hurt, and she even fakes pain but can't do it naturally.