September 30th has been announced as the Birthday of Runet. The Russian internet appeared relatively recently (the end of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s of the 20th century) and by development speeds is not lagging behind the international web at all. According to research conducted by the company W3Techs in 2016, Russian became the 2nd most popular language on the internet, after English (53.6%). Today, the internet plays such a colossal role in the life of society that its absence would be a catastrophe.
Many people already forgot the times when information was stored on floppy disks, CDs, or DVDs. Flash drives are also becoming a thing of the past. Millions of exabytes of personal, corporate, and government information is stored today in the cloud through Google Disk, Yandex Disk, OneDrive, iCloud, and others. The internet enables the instantaneous synchronization of documents, ‘distance’ work with files from anywhere around the world on any computer or telephone, and, no less important, saving absolutely all changes made to a document, which removes the possibility of the irreversible deletion of important information.
The internet has already absorbed magazines, newspapers, and mail, and is slowly absorbing television. Wikipedia has already replaced the old standard encyclopedia. And in the production of mechanical equipment, cyber-physical systems are being implemented en masse, controlled through the internet (Industry 4.0).
“You and I are standing on the brink of the fourth industrial revolution which is not only related to the implementation of cyber-physical systems,” explains SUSU Vice-Rector of informatization Leonid Sokolinskiy, “Its unique feature is that cyber-physical systems are connected to the internet, which makes it possible to transfer information between various cyber-physical systems without human interaction. This ability, in all its scale, will have huge consequences for humanity. By researchers’ estimates, this will happen quite soon – in the next 20 years.”
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It is possible to illustrate how humanity will live in the age of Industry 4.0 with a basic example related to technical services for light vehicles – all parts of the vehicle will be equipped with special sensors which send information about the condition of the vehicle to the on-board computer, which, through the internet, will pass along data to service center computers. The vehicle owner will not have to travel there and an artificial brain will control the means of movement. It may sound like a fantasy, but according to Leonid Borisovich, modern vehicles are already 90% computerized, so in a few decades, these forecasts will become everyday things for our lives:
“Speaking in a very simplified way, information about the condition of your vehicle will be passed along through the internet to some server in the “cloud” and be stored and analyzed there. Accordingly, the cloud system will monitor the condition of the vehicle. As soon as the program notes that some kinks are occurring in the vehicle, it won’t simply diagnose the error, but automatically show the cause, as well. If some piece of equipment needs to be replaced, the cloud system will send a request for the needed part or mechanism to the factory of that vehicle’s manufacturer. The signal will be received, and the necessary equipment will be manufactured on demand, automatically packaged, and sent to the appropriate service center in the appropriate location. Then, the vehicle will be sent a signal saying it needs to go to the center to receive a replacement part. The vehicle will drive itself to the service center at a time convenient to you, where a robot will replace the old part with a new one. After which, without any action by the owner, it will return home. This is Industry 4.0!”
However, it is not necessary to ‘vilify’ the capabilities of the internet, says the SUSU Vice-Rector of informatization. After all, artificial intelligence equal to the brain will not be created in the nearest future. Furthermore, the possibilities of the human brain are not totally studied yet, a few principles of its function remain a mystery for neurophysicists and neurosurgeons around the world.
“That which is very easy for a person (for example, recognizing another person’s face) is a difficult task for a computer. In the recent presentation of the iPhone X, they announced that one brand new feature of this model is that the phone will recognize the owner not by his thumbprint, but by his face. This has occurred thanks to the fact that the iPhone X is equipped with a strong processor which, 15 years ago, would have been stronger than any supercomputer on the planet. This is an example of how strong processors are able to solve some elements of the tasks of artificial intelligence. But it’s still early to speak about them solving the same tasks as an ordinary person. Humanity does not yet have the resources, technology, or knowledge.”
A real threat to humanity is not artificial brains but hackers, who use the world wide web for the realization of their selfish, and sometimes more damaging, plans, like terrorism on the web or cyberterrorism. This can occur through the creation of harmful software with which the hacker gets in to cyber-physical systems, causing irreversible damage.
“How can we fight against this? We can build electronic barriers such as encryption or special software systems which will track and intercept suspicious activity. There are many antivirus programs. The international leader in cyber security is the company Kaspersky Lab, with whom SUSU has signed a contract about mutual partnership and has opened a joint Research and Education Center of Information Security. The priority area of partnership is protecting automated control systems, which is very relevant for the Ural region, since a huge number of important manufacturers are located here. Kaspersky Lab will help us complete tasks for system security related to the development of Industry 4.0. Together, we are working on the development of methods, algorithms, and new approaches to the protection of cyber-physical systems and systems of automatic control.”
Annually, South Ural State University releases around 50 highly-professional, specialized workers in the area of information security who are more than in demand on the labor market.
Internet technologies in the university are intensively integrated into the academic and research processes, which allows SUSU to keep up with the international trends. The extremely in-demand areas of the Institute of Open and Distance Education, massive open online courses, are being released in huge numbers. A portal for online education Electronic SUSU has been created, making it possible to receive an education without the active participation of the professor. Worth of note is one more internet project at SUSU – the Scientific Library of Electronic Resources, which are freely available to all students, professors, and staff.