'Angell of Doom' takes center stage at Black Hat Briefings

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.

Technology deals with statistical norms that do not take into account the infinite variety of the real world, Angell said. Categorization and analysis under these circumstances strips facts of their reality and adds uncertainty and risk to the systems they are intended to analyze and control.

The result is a world in which problems proliferate more quickly than solutions. This is a world in which patches and updates cannot keep up with existing software, let alone new applications and operating systems.

On the bright side, this means there is plenty of money to be made producing and fixing IT, but Angell cautioned the audience not to expect things to get better any time soon.

“Digital technology is part of the problem, not the solution,” he said. “There is no solution, only contingencies.”