17 Dec
2003
17 Dec
'03
11:17 p.m.
Bill Gates in "The Road Ahead": A complete failure of the information highway is worth worrying about. Because the system will be thoroughly decentralized, any single outage is unlikely to have a widespread effect. If an individual server fails, it will be replaced and restored. But the system could be susceptible to assault. As the system becomes more important, we will have to design in more redundancy. One area of vulnerability is the system's reliance on cryptography -- the mathematical locks that keep information safe. Excerpted in Newsweek, November 27, pp. 67-68. Rubberneck the roadwreck with Steven Levy in "Bill's New Vision."