The Doyle Report: A Newsmaker Interview with Pablos Holman, an Internet Bad Boy with a Heart of Gold

Internet bad boy. Social provocateur. Thought leader.

Pablos Holman has been called these names and more—and for good reason: he pushes things to the limit. Take his presentation at the 2016 IoT Emerge event held in Chicago. While trying to make a point about “cracking” cyber defenses, he displayed a photo of a model in a thong bikini with her back to the camera. That got people talking.

So did his fall 2016 presentation at TEDxMidwest. There, he demonstrated how easy it is for a hacker to connect to a hotel network and seize control of televisions and more. When he showed screenshots of people’s viewing choices, bank transfers and other activities, the audience gasped. See for yourself:

When I sat down with him to discuss security and the IoT, I couldn’t help but like his charm, wit and straightforwardness. If you’re not familiar with Holman, here’s his bio straight from his web site:

Pablos is a futurist, inventor, and notorious hacker with a unique view into breaking and building new technologies. Pablos is consulting worldwide on invention and design projects that assimilate new technologies—making wild ideas a bit more practical and vice versa. He helped create the world's smallest PC; 3D printers at Makerbot; spaceships with Jeff Bezos; artificial intelligence agent systems; and the Hackerbot, a Wi-Fi seeking robot. Currently, Pablos is working for Nathan Myhrvold at the Intellectual Ventures Laboratory where a wide variety of futuristic invention projects are underway including a fission reactor powered by nuclear waste; a machine to suppress hurricanes; a system to reverse global warming; and a device that can shoot mosquitoes out of the sky with lasers to help eradicate malaria.

In our interview, he discussed why hacking is like fracking (when you apply pressure to a system, you yield new outcomes), privacy in the world of the IoT, “managing” rogue actors online, disruptive innovation and workforce dislocation, just to name a few things.

If these topics matter to you, take a listen here for more insights. This interview is brought you by the IoT Institute.