An Interview with Giuseppe Corrente on Cybersecurity and Values (Part Seven)
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/08/01
Abstract
Dr. Giuseppe Corrente is a Computer Science teacher at Torino University. He earned a Ph.D. in Science and High Technology – Computer Science in 2013 at Torino University. He has contributed to the World Intelligence Network’s publication Phenomenon. He discusses: cybersecurity; cybersecurity now; the Fourth Industrial Revolution; an unstable context of continual technological revolutions grounded in the advancements of science; this current wave of science and technology; Humanism; traditional religions; ethics and philosophy; and values.
Keywords: cybersecurity, Darwin, Giuseppe Corrente, Humanism, values.
An Interview with Giuseppe Corrente on Cybersecurity and Values (Part Seven)[1],[2]*
*Please see the footnotes, bibliography, and citation style listing after the interview.*
1. Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We live in an era of immense amounts of information and a proliferation of different means by which individual citizens can acquire some semblance of privacy because of the individual want or need for a sense of self with oneself and not a sense of self consistently and always integrated with the extended self of community and society. Individuated consciousness is important and seems like the main drive behind the development of applications and technologies devoted to individual privacy. Cybersecurity is the current wave or reflection of this personal need as human beings. What is cybersecurity?
Giuseppe Corrente: I think we have to think to cybersecurity as the transposition in cyberworld of the security and privacy in physical world. It can be thought as a need not only of individual, but also of companies and nations. Furthermore a cyber-attack can have obviously heavy consequences in the physical world, also in terms of human lifes.
2. Jacobsen: Why is cybersecurity important now?
Corrente: Now our lives are wholly embedded in the information and communication technology, and so it is also for economic production cycles, financial flows, spatial and military affairs. Each thing, from strictly personal to worldwide domain, can be potentially the target of a cyber-attack. It is also of main importance for governments and politics to find the correct balance between individual privacy and rights and social security, this is a very difficult question and can determine the difference between the democracy and the tyranny.
3. Jacobsen: With the Fourth Industrial Revolution, we continue to see human stupidity ramped to a new level of incoherence and human genius brought to new levels of elegance, beauty, and functionality. What is it?
Corrente: The eternal fight between the Good and the Evil in one of its aspects. When I study a technology my aim is to understand it and to become an expert of it. This is a prerequisite to use it for the Good, other than for the personal profit, obviously.
4. Jacobsen: How is this simply another wave in the continual onslaught against human attempts at stability in an unstable context of continual technological revolutions grounded in the advancements of science?
Corrente: The technology is a consequence and an application of the Science. It is also a mean. It has to be used for the Good. And above all with competence. Human errors have caused the main technological disasters.
5. Jacobsen: Science is one human activity. Technology, thus, is one application of the human activity to fulfill human needs, wants, and whims to one degree or another. Technology and its functionality continue to show human beings as a good enough evolved organism with all sorts of flaws, failings, and foibles, not as some divine plan or construction but, rather, as an obvious case of a work-in-progress based on the pressures of nature. What in this current wave of science and technology seems to best reflect this now?
Corrente: Theory of evolution by Darwin.
6. Jacobsen: Humanism came with the collapse of many supernaturalistic claims about the nature of the world and the theologies and philosophies of the world have been playing catch-up with science in a number of ways. However, when we come to the modern world, human beings, full stop, have been having difficulty keeping apace with the information revolutions before us. In a manner of speaking, if we apply the Positive Disintegration theoretical framework for understanding higher-order coherence of cognitive architecture – that which yield more functional and appropriate comprehension of an organism context and relation to an environment and other organisms – in a more general fashion, then the current modes of operation will lead to continual, and increasing, calamities of the internal mindscapes of human beings. We will feel a collapse, a falling away, a breaking apart, for the development of more coherent and universalistic senses of self to move beyond some of the siloed futuristic ideations of some strands or streams of the humanist ethic and life stance so characteristic of the world today. I observe some of this in the universalistic sense of compassion emergent, a tad, a bit, a whiff, in the coronavirus responses of peoples all over the world, which remains a refresh gust of cosmopolitanism against the ethnic nationalism characteristic of several countries now. What else can help move to the world more towards the cosmopolitan Humanism rather than the parochial and provincial (statist) Humanism?
Corrente: Using the Smart Working tools for meetings among distant people ad organizing periodically these meeting also between group distant also in life philosophy, interest and ideology. Communicating.
7. Jacobsen: Following from the previous question, are traditional religions up to the task now?
Corrente: A traditional religion can represent an absolute value for an its credent, or can represent one of many possible values or points of view for an extraneous, the very important thing is to not tolerate the integralism and the intolerance.
8. Jacobsen: Following from two questions ago and echoing the immediate past question, what ethics and philosophy can fulfill this task of creating a more just, equitable, and enlightened world?
Corrente: A mix of disciplines, scientific values, religious traditions and the willing to study and to communicate each other in the sign of tolerance, knowledge, curiosity and above all respect.
9. Jacobsen: Any technology infusion changes human beings and, thus, alters human nature. It is not a question of yes or no, but a matter of degree. Thus, any proclamations of a human future or a techno-future/robo-future are either ignorant or not paying attention. The proposed Singularity is not a – ahem – singular event, but, rather, an event on a roll and part of a wider – dare I say – spiritual advancement of humanity a la Chardin while without the supernatural, metamaterial, extranatural non-sense (as in that which can’t be tested or sensed) and vague speculative theological musings tied to them. We’re talking about a comprehensive mastery in general principles of the natural world leading to technical mastery to be reflected in the technology for us, followed by a transformation – all as a ball on a roll gathering momentum – in the definition of human nature towards that which incorporates technology. However, I would consider technology in a much larger sense in which technology becomes that which nature does with evolution via natural selection (and other selection mechanisms) to bring about human beings and the technology constructed by human beings becoming a more conscious design and selection process, while still amounting to technology. Our split between natural and synthetic seems – well – artificial on this level to me. If we take a larger definition of “technology” and a cosmopolitan sense of Humanism, and reconfigure notions of a future for humans and human values, and a future for technology and artificial intelligence values, what makes this Industry 4.0, cybersecurity, Humanism, and so on, simply a matter of reframing perspective and adapting oneself and one’s values in a positive manner to the inevitable changes incoming and, in turn, to change the future to the values incorporating of that which we deem positive, humanistic, now?
Corrente: We can adapt ourselves, or evolve, together with science and technology. Remaining ourselves with our values. But in some questions this is not the point. In few years this is possible, but in few decades we could redefine the human being concept itself, and when this will be necessary, I hope that this will be done by the intellectual and moral leadership of humanity and not directed by political and economic or financial interests.
Appendix I: Footnotes
[1] Ph.D. (2013), Science and High Technology – Computer Science, Torino University.
[2] Individual Publication Date: August 1, 2020: http://www.in-sightjournal.com/corrente-seven; Full Issue Publication Date: September 1, 2020: https://in-sightjournal.com/insight-issues/.
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