Big data means big opportunities for criminals - this is how to stop them

As technology rapidly progresses, doomsday stories emerge just as quickly. Dissident voices, however, are trying to spread alternative messages. In the past century, increasingly efficient technology and the advancement of knowledge have addressed global challenges including global poverty, deaths from violent crime, childhood mortality, preventable diseases and human life expectancy - at a scale never seen before. For obvious reasons, such breakthroughs can be considered among humanity's greatest achievements; yet we also see how technology facilitates online disinformation, global cyberattacks and unprecedented terrorist media campaigns inspiring thousands of would-be terrorists. "Technology is a force that takes what was once scarce and makes it abundant," write Peter Diamantis and Steven Kotler in Abundance: The Future is Better than You Think.