[ISN] 'Angell of Doom' takes center stage at Black Hat Briefings

http://www.gcn.com/online/vol1_no1/46834-1.html

By William Jackson
GCN.com 
08/06/08

LAS VEGAS — Uncertainty is a fact of life, and the only thing we can be 
certain of is the unexpected, information technology gadfly Ian Angell 
said in a speech today to an audience of geeks, many of whom spend their 
days looking for ways to bring order to their worlds through computers. 
“If you become complacent, computers will really screw you up,” he 
warned.

Angell, a professor of information systems at the London School of 
Economics, made his dark statements in the opening keynote address for 
the Black Hat Briefings being held here this week. The professor, dubbed 
the “Angell of Doom” in his native Britain, is a self-described 
contrarian.

“When I smell flowers, I think funeral,” he said.

Angell has made a career of being skeptical about the idea that computer 
technology can bring order to our lives. Computers deal well with 
objective calculations, but they do not deal well with complexity and 
subjective behavior, he said. Linking computers with humans creates such 
complexity that even when technology works as intended it introduces 
additional problems through unintended consequences.

[...]


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