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Oh oh! Highly esoteric theoretical math and topology study has the potential for ungluing e-commerce. That's the gist of two reports out of Great Britian that point to potential proofs for the Riemann hypothesis and the Poincare conjecture (forget it: not worth explaining). Here are the story links: from the Guardian, Maths holy grail could bring disaster for internet and from VNUnet, Mathematical breakthrough could bring disaster for ecommerce.
"Why?" you ask. Here's the simple explanation (a snip from the Guardian):
Mathematicians could be on the verge of solving two separate million dollar problems. If they are right - still a big if - and somebody really has cracked the so-called Riemann hypothesis, financial disaster might follow. Suddenly all cryptic codes could be breakable. No internet transaction would be safe.I'm usually on the pulpit of broader knowledge and education in the "irrelevant" soft areas of Classics, History, Literature, and Philosophy. These little stories point very directly to how something abstract and unrelated to real business, might be worth paying attention to. Posted by Grayson at September 7, 2004 07:53 AM