Information System Evolution
One might argue that information services (and clients) have followed an evolution not unlike that of competing organisms in the wild.
At first it was enough to simply provide the most accurate and direct data possible, just as it was once sufficient for an organism to simply acquire nutrients and reproduce.
When organisms began deriving nourishment from other organisms (a very efficient way to acquire nutrients, after all – and, in the case of e-mail spammers or intruding upon vendors’ databases, a way to make some money or get free services at virtually zero cost) it became necessary to develop defenses: IP block lists and security auditing might be the equivalent of a poisonous, bitter taste or a tough, bony shell in the animal kingdom.
… blocking IP addresses, however, will only get you so far. My understanding is that an evolved organism’s answer to the constant threat of attack may take one of a handful of forms:
- Camouflage – Predators cannot eat you if they cannot see you (akin to the use of a virtual private network and “stealth” port closure or reporting inaccurate system information when queried)
- Symbiosis / Parasitism – Become a part of your attacker (or a stronger organism) to avoid destruction (perhaps it is a weak analogy, but I view the tactic of freely providing bad information to be a kind of parasitic defense – the attacker’s motivation to keep spamming, for example, is slowly sucked dry by an overwhelming amount of inaccurate data, thence lowering the likelihood of successful money-making)
Granted, there is much improvement to be made but I find it to be a fun analogy. Consider the prognosticative power of evolution’s lessons to the organism: every security problem has already been solved in one way or another (and the ones which could not be solved have a long record in the fossil history – failure to adapt to sudden change often represents an insurmountable problem for survival in organisms and information systems).
Parasitizing Spam Operations
The idea of poisoning the well suits my scorched earth aesthete:
All you have to do is link to this page so that whenever a spammer’s robot scans your page, it will be sucked into this one. To link to this page, just use this simple code…
… These links will redirect email harvesting bots to trap sites that will feed it with an almost infinite loop of dynamically generated fake email addresses, mostly on known spammer owned domains! This will render their harvested lists practically useless and of no commercial value.
- Fight Back Against Spammers
SpamPoison.com
I do so love this poisoned SPAM
I could use it – would use it – to wreak mayhem.
Well, evolution by natural selection is applicable to some things (Gerald Edelman has made a carrier of applying it to describe specific immunoresponse and to describe neural computation by means of “neuronal group selection”).
From what I can tell, evolution by natural selection is applicable to many realms of biology (maybe cosmology too), but in regards to human matters, it seems that the analogy isn’t totally appropriate because our response to our environment isn’t random in the same way that mutation is random in DNA synthesis or immunoresponses, etc.
The mechanisms of natural evolution are secondary to the abstraction which evolution, as an idea for the organization and refinement of an organism, presents: responses to feedback at a cellular level impact the outcome of the organism.
Moreover, the traditional theories of evolution as a process of random mutation are becoming somewhat dated – there is evidence to suggest that evolution may occur over the course of an organism’s actual lifespan (versus a predetermined evolution occurring in the genetic material passed from parent organisms subsequently passed down to the best breeders).
The evolution in vivo hypothesis is very elegant – consider what it would mean for rapid adaptation (the very core demand placed upon a species threatened with extinction):
I’m not sure what you mean by “natural evolution” at this point. do you mean evolution by natural selection? or the process of an organism adapting to its environment? are you talking phylogeny or ontogeny here?
Barring clarification, I can say that I misspoke.
Any distinction between “man” and “nature” is a false dichotomy. Our activities are a direct result of the very natural interactions of matter which gave rise to our predecessors, et cetera… implying that there is a natural evolution in opposition to an unnatural evolution is absurd, though I tend to think of changes to genetic structure (or changes to ideas) based in deliberate and conscious action to be a kind of assisted process: genetic engineering and metacognitive evaluation could be considered a discrete category opposite the “natural”, unconscious interaction of amino acids.
I consider consciousness a kind of successor to physical evolution – where genetic adaptation proved inadequate to facilitate rapid adjustment, the capacity for knowledge has compensated.
The human body’s functions are generally optimized for information-bearing capacity, even if it’s not obvious for all specimens: from a purely mechanical point of view, the human brain’s oxygen and glucose requirements would likely appear to be grossly inefficient in comparison to the anatomy of similarly-sized mammals, however, this physical adaptation facilitates feats far in excess of the strength or even intelligence of the individual via use of machines and collaboration between individuals.