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What is Geekonomics about?
Geekonomics is about the astonishing lack of consumer protection in the software market and how this impacts economic and national security. Software buyers are literally crash test dummies for an industry that is remarkably insulated against liability, accountability, and responsibility for any harm, damages or loss that should occur because of manufacturing defects or weaknesses
that allow cyber attackers
to break into and hijack our computer systems. As a matter of good public policy, this is unacceptable and must change.
Geekonomics is also about us and why we behave the way we do when it comes to protecting ourselves in cyber space. As such, Geekonomics is about incentives. Specifically, Geekonomics is about incentives that affect three groups of people: consumers, software manufacturers, and hackers. Each group has incentives for making, buying, and breaking into computer systems that are rife with defects, errors, and weaknesses. This book explains these incentives and how new and different incentives are necessary to address the problem of “bad” software.
Finally, Geekonomics is a book for everyone, not just for geeks or technophiles, because frankly, in modern civilization, how and when software touches us is less our choice every day.
Why is there a bridge on the cover of Geekonomics?
A bridge is infrastructure you can see. Software is infrastructure you cannot see. But the quality of software construction affects you as surely as the quality and attention to detail given to bridge construction. Perhaps more so. Software is the stuff of modern infrastructure and this infrastructure is pervasive and global.
Geekonomics strives to help you compare software with things like bridges and cement (among many others) that you are familiar with in the physical world. By relating what you are familiar with, with what you perhaps are not so familiar with, my hope is that the full scope and impact of software on your daily life will become more apparent.
Why is Geekonomics a necessary and novel approach to the dangers confronting national infrastructure?
The discussion about software security and how it impacts national infrastructure has largely been dominated over the decades by very smart, but very technically-oriented individuals. As such, their response to the “software problem” has been almost unanimously technical. It has also alienated the very people that software impacts: us. The problem of bad software has been a discussion lead by experts for experts. This was necessary, but far from complete. Software is so pervasive in modern civilization that the discussion should not be limited only to experts.
As Geekonomics argues, insecure software is as much an economic issue as it is a technology issue. This is a critical matter of public policy. Without proper incentives, technology alone will not address the problem of “bad” software. In short, incentives matter. To change the story of “bad” software, the incentives must change.
What do you want people to take away from reading Geekonomics?
We are all in this together. We are all, as economists like to say, trying to “maximize our utility.” That is, we, each in our own way, are trying to make our lives as absolutely pleasant as possible. But society is a morass of competing, mis-aligned, and contradictory incentives. This means individual actions, though beneficial to ourselves, may detrimentally affect others.
Though my tone is often times urgent and forceful in Geekonomics, I am not blaming software manufacturers in their entirety for the sorry state of cyber space. Software
manufacturers are not consciously trying to harm you, hoodwink you, or otherwise cheat you; however, as Geekonomics argues, software manufacturers do not currently have sufficient incentives to look out for your well-being in a meaningful
manner either.
A similar scenario existed in 1950s and 1960s America relating to auto manufacturers. Auto manufacturers were not trying to kill people when building cars that were more aesthetically pleasing than safe. But the result was tragic nonetheless. Market incentives simply promoted cars that were festooned with chrome and tailfins, but deadly in their operation. Without meaningful incentives that held auto manufacturers
to account, the modern car would not nearly be as safe as it is today. Geekonomics makes a similar argument regarding software. Wonderful graphical interfaces and “feature-rich” software are the modern equivalent of chrome and tailfins. Compelling indeed, but far from safe or secure, unless meaningful incentives exist to make it so.
Consumers are not without culpability however. Consumers are participants in the software market just as much as software manufacturers. Consumers too have an impact
in what they demand, or do not demand, from software manufacturers.
Arguing which is more culpable for the sorry state of cyber space, consumers or software manufacturers, simply benefits the third group: hackers. The incentives of the software market must change for both consumers and manufacturers. The cyber
attackers exploiting our computer systems are hungry, relentless, and cunning. Software needs to be suitable to the task and position we have given it within our national infrastructures. The incentives for attackers are simply too compelling to do otherwise.
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