Our Own Worst Enemy

Continuing my Iron Man themed posts as I count down the days to the movie premiere of Iron Man 2 this next friday, May 7th, I want to touch on a major issue that affects technology in general, and science-fiction movies in specific: villain's rise because of the hero.

In the first Iron Man movie, Tony Stark's life is a playboy joyride until he has his "come to Jesus" moment and decides to build the Iron Man armor. Lo and behold, because he starts using the armor to thwart Obadiah Stane, Stane builds his own armor and they have an Iron Man/Iron Monger duel at the climax of the movie. What if Tony hadn't built his first armor?
Or similarly, Stark starts his "Mk. I" armor by building the "arc reactor" that protects his heart as well as powers his suits. What if, upon escaping from Afghanistan, he had returned home and had surgery to remove the metal shards in his heart? He could then have removed the arc reactor and destroyed it. Or at least hidden it where Obie couldn't have used it to power the Iron Monger suit.
I am concerned a major flaw in the upcoming Iron Man 2 movie will be that all of Tony's nemeses will derive from things he did/does, rather than simply existing. I'm afraid that Mickey Rourke's Whiplash will be motivated by some anger he holds towards Stark, and be seeking revenge. I am concerned that Justin Hammer will build the Iron Bots because he uses industrial espionage of some sort to obtain basic plans for the old Mk. I-III suits Tony proudly displays in his lab.

Back in the real world, isn't this a pretty common theme as well? The government invents and develops the internet, then upon releasing it to the public becomes enmeshed in an eternal battle against hackers who use that very internet to try to obtain government information or harm government agencies/individuals? Or consider the modern automobile, that has single-handedly changed the way we commute, travel, and live...while also introducing a concepts like vehicular homocide, drunk-driving, and greenhouse gas emissions. Or consider the gun. Without the gun, would JFK still be alive? Martin? Bobby? And how many soldiers, friend or foe, have died because of guns? But then again, how many people have protected themselves with guns? How many frontiersman fed their families during harsh winters via guns?

The cynical truth is that technological utopia is an illusion. As long as character flaws continue to exist in humans (hint: they have existed since our species emerged), technology that becomes available - no matter how altruistic its original purpose - will be inescapably maligned by someone and give that technology a bad name.

So we must look to the future, and try to anticipate exactly how emerging technologies could be corrupted. I harp on and on about autonomous cars being the safest future imaginable...but could a malicious individual hack my car, and turn it into a high-speed steel projectile? Could a malicious person hack their own car, giving themselves emergency vehicle priority so they could zoom through traffic...thereby snarling traffic all around them? I often suggest fusion power is the future for Earth-based humanity's energy needs. But could fusion be bent to a dictator's will? Could a terrorist state circumvent safety protocols, overloading a fusion reactor and holding the world hostage?
Certainly these events are unlikely. But if 20 years ago I'd told you that "a hacker will break into the former Alaska governor's yahoo email account and obtain evidence that the former governor had used that account for official government business, and the former governor will be subpoenaed and testify about it" I'd have been laughed at. Yet here we stand, with elected officials and hackers alike illegally abusing the very technology we once thought would set us free.


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