網上銀行保安新措施

幾年前發生過數宗網上銀行失竊事件，銀行界極度恐慌，認為網上保安有嚴重問題。當時大家都 對互聯網私隱有疑慮，認為一切措施都有漏洞；其實大部份情況是用者不小心將私隱洩露，或是其所用密碼被輕易猜到。但銀行網上保安因此回歸石器時代，人人要攜帶一個密碼產生器 Token。其理論是網上密碼是你所知道的網上保密方法，而 Token 卻是你手持的保密器具；因兩者並不互通，網上竊匪不容易兩者皆得到。Token 一事越攪越複雜，超越擾民的程度。這個情況我在2005年時已預料，請看看我幾年前寫的博文。

究竟 Token 令人討厭到什麼程度？可以看看下面我的一部份 Token。要找出那一個是正確的 Token來用已經是一件麻煩事。



不久之前，神話終於破滅。新聞報導有網上竊匪可以截取 Token的密碼而犯案。原來人人攜帶的 Token並不完全安全；銀行用了不少資源去購買、分發、保養 Token，又要提升電腦程式去處理 Token密碼，全體客戶都要攜帶 Token；一切功夫原來都是白費。我幾個月前寫過一篇博文評論這事件，提醒大家要小心。

好消息終於來了。經多番投訴和解釋，銀行終於清醒，知道 Token對客戶造成滋擾和有保安假象。有銀行剛推出新的保安方法，可以不再使用 Token。其方法是使用第二密碼，而這個第二密碼並不需要客戶全部輸入，只是隨機輸入密碼的某幾個位置。這個方法可以避免一些木馬程式截取完整的密碼數據，比使用 Token方便而有效得多。銀行更加入數條保安問答題，由客戶自訂答案，以便在有懷疑的情況時再加強核實程序。雖然這仍然不是一個萬無一失的保安方法，但比對起 Token已是一大德政。希望這些新保安方法可以很快被廣泛接納，Token從此成為歷史。

聖母又顯靈

除了在哥倫比亞波哥大顯靈外，聖母又在墨西哥城顯靈，今次是地鐵站一片水漬。雖然教徒表現出無比的信念，但教會卻潑泠水，說沒有神學因素可以指此為神蹟。這是聰明教會笨教徒的一個例子。

What is a global brain?

The Global Brain Awakens by Peter Russell
What is a global brain?

Following the explanation of the possible evolution path, Peter Russel speculates on our ability to evolve to a higher level. From a philosophical standpoint, he looks into the issue of self, which is a major subject for any philosopher. Our self as we see it, is mainly a skin-encapsulated ego. This is an essential concept as every human being is an individual entity. We see the world as activities interacting between ourselves and the outside world. This is the source of human survival as well as a problem as it is the root of much of the thoughts on self-interest, personal well being, both materially and spiritually. It creates a conflicting situation between oneself and everything else. I read in another article that this "I-ness" was considered the source of human evil. In fact, it is a necessary and natural characteristic for every human being to remain as an individual.

Throughout human history, there were instances where spiritual leaders spoke of the pure self. There are many theories, both philosophical and spiritual, that besides the skin-encapsulated ego, there is a pure self within everyone. However, this pure self is not the dominating reality of oneself because we are heavily affected by the interacting activities between ourself and the outside world in a conflicting situation. We are always trying to get what we need and want from the outside world, while defending ourselves from the intrusion of the outside world to our self-interest. To get to the pure self, one need to put aside the thoughts of everything of the material world. In fact, from a broad-based research, there were many cases where a person claimed that he suddenly saw the pure self. The general description has something in common: they all felt an unity between themselves and the whole world, or even the universe.

Peter Russel practices transcendental meditation TM. This is the main stream meditation method which is very popular and has it roots from India. He says that TM is one of many ways which could help people calm down, get rid of all thoughts, and find the pure self, even for a brief moment. He proposes that such ability to know the pure self could be seen from the teaching of many spiritual leaders. Examples are: Buddha spoke of Nirvana, Christ spoke of the Kingdom of Heaven, Laozhi spoke of heaven and man becoming one, etc. These spiritual leaders all tried to preach what they knew and the method to know the pure self. However, such techniques were hard to learn and all religions which grew from such teachings all fell into superstition and indoctrination.

The author sees the trend and suggests that as more and more people found the pure self through TM or other appropriate methods, a larger group of human minds will be linked spiritually. When such mind links reach a critical mass, the evolution leap to a global brain will occur. The human race will then evolve into a superorganism acting as a whole instead of 6.5 billion individuals.

I consider such conclusion highly biased and heavily leaned towards the author's background as a practitioner of meditation. I think the conditions for an evolution leap as he proposed are not on the side of the spiritual mind alone. The complexity of the human society is from diversity, organization and connectivity. In particular, connectivity of the human mind is now aided by the advance of communication technology in the form of computers, Internet and artificial intelligence. Studies of intelligence all point to the destination of the awakening of artificial intelligence called the Singularity, where the entire computer network becomes one conscious mind. Although there are many horror movies and sci-fi stories about the machines dominating human, I tend to think that human would increasing become dependent on the technology he creates and they eventually merged into one. We and the entire computer network and all the artificial intelligence within would evolve together into the global brain. This global brain would strive to preserve plant Earth as Gaia and then look outwards for opportunities away from Earth.

Global Brain Awakens

The Global Brain Awakens by Peter Russell

This hardcover copy is a re-edited version released in 1995. The first version entitled The Global Brain was published in 1983, some 26 years ago. When I read it, it was hard to believe that the book was written so long ago, because much of the content is very fresh, containing some scientific findings which have been made popular only in recent years. It is perhaps owing to the background of Peter Russell as a theoretical physicist that he was familiar with these theories many years ago when they first emerged.



The author started by mentioning the Gaia Hypothesis proposed by James Lovelock in the 70's. I came across the Gaia Hypothesis in 2005 and wrote a blog article on it. Basically, Lovelock observed that the planet Earth showed sign of a single organism with many different but inter-depending systems. It also displayed an ability to adjust itself to maintain a homeostasis. Some critics considered that such a evolutionary development was not possible as the planet Earth does not reside in a competitive environment with similar bodies.

The theory of evolution has evolved itself in recent years. Its application is now not restricted to animals and plants but to many living systems. Based on a new branch of living systems theory, many organisms including many systems of the human society having 19 common sub-systems are general living systems. The evolution theory proposed by Charles Darwin is being refined. In addition to the process of survival for the fittest, which is a lengthy and complicated process of gradual and slow evolution, there have been many incidents of sudden change in the evolution path, leading to twists known as evolution leaps. The evolution curve is not linear, but kinky with sudden turns in response to sudden and dramatic changes in the environment.

Throughout the evolution of everything, there is a similar pattern that there were long periods of Darwinian evolution separated by evolution leaps. It is now believed that the origin of many evolution events was from chaos. A sudden change in the environment would create a chaotic situation where mutations grow randomly. Among the chaos, some orders eventually appears owing to the competition and the rule of survival for the fittest. Such orders slowly evolve and become more complex until there is a condition for a higher order of evolution to emerge.

The first evolution leap occurred after the Big Bang which was a chaotic event. Modern science is still trying to figure out what was it before the Big Bang. The Big Bang emitted entirely energy. The evolution from energy to matter is now a heavily researched subject. It is considered an emergent event arising from the chaotic pure energy environment.

Another major evolution leap was for matters to evolve into life. Matters started from the chaotic environment full of atoms and evolved into the orders of macromolecules. Complexity increased until a time an emergent event occurred and organic matters in the form of life appeared. It started with bacteria and algae and slowly evolved to multicellular organisms we know today.

Among the living things we know, complexity continued to increase in the cerebral development of the human brain. About two million years ago, another evolution leap occurred. An emergent event occurred and the human brain achieved self-reflective consciousness. We are the only species of living things on Earth that knows ourselves and is aware of the big picture of the environment around us.

According to Russel, such evolution leap would need three major conditions. The first one is quantity and diversity. There must be a lot of atoms and molecules of a large diversity, or 10 billion brain cells to start with. Second, there must be a good organization among them for the sustainable infrastructure to develop. Third, there must be complex and efficient connectivity within the organization for the next level of evolution to emerge.

The human society, composed of 6.6 billion self-reflective conscious human minds, is approaching this critical point of evolution leap. The quantity of different minds is sufficiently large and the cultural diversity among them is very high. The human society is well organized after several thousand years of development of civilizations. In the last few hundred years, owing to the advance of technology in travelling and exchange of knowledge, nearly all human communities are well connected. In the last few decades, communication technology has enabled individual human minds to connect efficiently. A large neural network has been formed among humans.

Thus, Peter Russel speculates, the next evolution leap is likely to occur within the complexity of the human society. An emergent event will occur to bring us to the next higher level. However, as for all evolution leaps, there is no way that the predecessors could imagine the outcome. There is no concept, knowledge, language which could help express what is ahead of us because such experience is not with us. Atoms and molecules cannot understand what life is. Mammals and plants also cannot understand what is the meaning, feeling and effect of a self-reflective conscious mind. What Peter Russel could guess, and it is likely to be inaccurate, is that the entire human race could evolve into a superorganism which would be aware of itself as a whole as well as maintaining the activities of the individuals. He calls it the Global Brain. It is a big step forward from Gaia. However, what is this global brain going to achieve?