Many people don’t realize how close we as a society are to optimizing technology to an extent that would have previously been considered impossible.
If you’re reading this as a relatively digitally uninitiated person, you might have passing familiarity with ChatGPT.
Probably you’ve heard the phrase “Big Data” before. More than likely, however, neither technology has registered within your life in a major way yet.
In fact, IoT, AI, Blockchain, 5G, and connectivity are all still in their earliest stages of development. We’ve only tasted what they can do.
The future for digital technology is unbelievably bright, but at the same time, threatened. In this article, we take a look at what it takes to build a brighter digital future and what risks need to be taken into account.
The Risks
Digital technology makes things unimaginably faster, but also enormously riskier. In May of 2021, 5,500 miles of pipeline — the Colonial Pipeline, to be more specific — was held hostage within the Eastern United States.
The culprits managed to hack the fuel distribution system and hold it for a staggering $4.4 million, which, by the way, was paid.
When all of our infrastructure and personal/financial information exists in a quote-unquote “cloud,” it’s both more convenient and more dangerous.
The more we depend on digital technology — and certainly, we already depend on it a lot — the more we need to prepare for the risks it can create.
To step comfortably into a new age of technology, we need to understand what is possible, recognize what threatens it, and build systems that will keep us safe.
What is Possible?
A lot of attention has been paid to artificial intelligence over the last couple of years. To the extent that many readers who have been told by ChatGPT to eat rocks might be a little underwhelmed by the realities of what this technology can do.
It is true that artificial intelligence is far from what it could be today. It’s also a fast-growing technology that improves constantly. But its application for reshaping society isn’t in its ability to help you plan a vacation or write a resignation email to your boss. It’s in how it will pair with other technologies to automate and accelerate things that we already rely on.
Working in conjunction with IoT, 5G, and blockchain, artificial intelligence can provide deeper levels of speed and precision in some of the most sensitive industries imaginable — for example, healthcare, climate control, transportation, and manufacturing.
There is so much potential for a world where sustainability is brought to manufacturing, disease diagnostics and treatment regimens are many times more rapid than was ever possible, and high-level supply chain management ensures a never-before-seen level of accessibility to commodities that we all take for granted.
A golden age of digital technology is upon us. We just need to make sure that we step safely into the future.
The Biggest Threats
The biggest threats to a safe and self-sustaining digital landscape exist primarily in the cybersecurity territory.
Certainly, there are concerns surrounding ransomware, particularly as it might be applied to critical infrastructure. In many cases, the groups behind these high-profile attacks are operating on behalf of a malicious government entity.
The money they demand to end the attack is generally a secondary concern. The actual motivation behind these hacks is more often than not to sow fear and discomfort.
We also need to be much more particular about the quality of our information. Artificial intelligence has made deepfake technology much more realistic than it used to be.
It’s also true that artificial intelligence produces a lot of misinformation through hallucinations.
With information more accessible than ever, it’s of the utmost importance that we, as a society, become better at researching well and discerning fake information.
The Engineers Behind Digital Infrastructure
Project engineers can be the architects of our technological renaissance.
What does a project engineer do? While the specifics of their work depend on the goal, their general responsibilities include managing complex infrastructure projects and ensuring that systems are built with sustainability and security in mind.
Concrete examples of spaces where project engineers often operate include data centers, network infrastructure, cloud migration projects, and industrial IoT.
Their job is essentially to make sure that the technologies we’re becoming increasingly reliant on are well built, protected from bad actors, and capable of performing at scale.
Cybersecurity Career Paths That Are Impactful
If you want to enter the front lines of our digital frontier, but aren’t quite sure that project engineering is right for you, there are many impactful roles you can occupy within the cybersecurity space.
Cybersecurity is a foundational component of national defense, industrialization, and many other important industries.
There are defensive roles in which security professionals analyze existing infrastructure, patch gaps, and maintain systems.
There are also offensive roles in which a cybersecurity expert might actively try to break into a system as a way of assessing vulnerability.
These jobs are increasingly important in cloud security, IoT security, AI security, and other applications.
You can get cybersecurity jobs through a number of different pathways, but one of the most direct and assured ways of getting a job in this niche is to major in cybersecurity.
Conclusion
It pretty much goes without saying that the future of technology-related careers is bright. It’s a constantly growing industry that becomes only more important with time.
If you are interested in contributing not just to technology as an industry, but also to the future of our society as a whole, consider a career in technology.
You will not regret it. Not only are these jobs financially rewarding, but they are also a genuinely important way to make a difference in the world.
