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Beware the Internet
frost_knight writes "Washington Post opinion writer Robert J. Samuelson writes 'If I could, I would repeal the Internet. It is the technological marvel of the age, but it is not — as most people imagine — a symbol of progress. Just the opposite. We would be better off without it.' It is his belief that the dangers of the Internet outweigh its benefits."
The reason? Cyberwarfare of course.
In all fairness, Washington Post opinion pages are normally very stupid so this is not out of line with what's expected.
Me? I'd repeal the Baby Boomer generation. The Internet's only scary when you're still dealing with a scarcity-based mindset. Otherwise, you're trying to figure out how to make the real world more like the Internet (minus goatse, natch).
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
By cyberwarfare, I mean the capacity of groups — whether nations or not — to attack, disrupt and possibly destroy the institutions and networks that underpin everyday life. These would be power grids, pipelines, communication and financial systems, business record-keeping and supply-chain operations, railroads and airlines
Hey, guess what? Ordinary warfare can disrupt and destroy those things as well. Guess we'd better "repeal" those, too.
a terrifying danger: cyberwar
I don't know about anyone else, but compared to actual war, I find cyberwar to be about as terrifying as getting up in the night to go to the toilet.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I grant its astonishing capabilities: the instant access to vast amounts of information, the pleasures of YouTube and iTunes, the convenience of GPS and much more.
Hello? GPS is not a feature of the internet.
Also, I think he is totally wrong when he quotes cyberwar as a reason for removing the internet. Any organization that does not want the risks that come from connecting systems to the net can disconnect theirs. Simple, isn't it?
C - the footgun of programming languages
First of all he starts by telling us what the internet has brought us:
- vast amounts of information
- youtube
- itunes
- GPS
Wait, what? GPS?
second, the problem with the internet is not the internet. the internet is not obligatory, not everything people put on it is truth, it is not a reliable information source for personal data.
I am not scared of it, nor should I or anybody else be.
The problem with the internet, as with everything on this planet, is the nature of human kind.
Is the good Mr. Samuelson aware that 'the internet' is not actually a binary thing(except in certain architectural senses)? It's not like somebody in the control room flips a switch and *boom* TCP-rays fan out, brutally penetrating previously secure systems. You. Have. To. Connect. Things. To. The. Internet. To. Make. Them. Vulnerable. Are there plenty of things connected, that really ought not to be, because people are insufferably cheap and lazy? Sure, hard to argue with that. Does it somehow follow that we would be 'better off without the internet?". Only if you live in a curious universe where you have to shut down the entire internet just to get a few dumb fuckers to airgap their retro SCADA system.
(One might also argue that, if the people who are actually victims of internet attacks, the various companies and banks and things he cites, aren't willing to give up the convenience and low cost of the internet in favor of greater security, it is possible that the alarmist bullshit of people who want a wider remit to expand their paranoid security state online is alarmist bullshit... There is an argument to be made that people who haven't yet been attacked are illogically discounting the costs of future attacks in favor of present savings; but people who are being attacked today are weighing the costs and the benefits of being networked today, and generally staying networked. Go figure...)
Where would you start to look? Well, probably the library. If you really know nothing about a topic you might want to start with one the Encyclopaedia Britannica, something that hardly anybody would be able to afford to own at home. Then, if you want more specific information you might find out the Dewey classification for the topic area and check out the books on the shelves, or rummage through index cards. Perhaps (if you are lucky) the library has a computerised index. Want to look up something more topical? We used to have the Times Index, a printed index of what had been published in the Times (of London). Then it was a trip to the microfilm collection to look up back issues. Perhaps if you weren't making much progress you would have to ask around to see if someone had some pointers, maybe a contact of a contact. You *could* use the Internet and post a question to Usenet, perhaps someone would give you an answer in a few days. Maybe after a hard day's work you might be able to tease the nugget of information you wanted out of the library. Perhaps not.
Today? Well, you either Google it or look it up on Wikipedia. You'll have your answer in minutes and you can then get on and apply that knowledge. Now, tell me how that is NOT progress?
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I think the author longs for the bygone era when journalists were the primary source of how the majority of people shaped our personal views of the world. I for one, am glad that the veil has been lifted.
Participatory Governance : The only feasible option for a real democracy, where everyone really does have a say.
If I could, I would try to convince the Romans of the past to stop building roads. The reason for this is that I've discovered that since the advent of roads, there has been such a phenomenon as road-side bandits, highway robberies, and even standing armies using this newly found infrastructure to lay siege to our vast empire.
Ever since the Romans came along and deprecated our glorious and superior dirt infrastructure, we've been carelessly hooking up critical systems to this "road"-system: tax-collection, food transportation, even up to the point where we are now moving cattle over these infernal cobblestones instead of using the much safer glorious dirt infrastructure. We've hooked up entire towns, cities, even castles and palaces to this infrastructure we can barely contain and are surprised when those of malicious intent use it to our disadvantage.
Back in the good old days of our vastly superiour dirt infrastructure we had no such troubles with malcontents, criminals and foreign armies. It was a pleasant land of peasants toiling about in our magnificent dirt.
In conclusion, the Roman empire was a detriment to all of society. While seemingly introducing a convenient mode of transportation, and making all of our society dependant on our infrastucture, they clearly have introduced this concept with the intent of ending civilization as we know it. I therefor call out to you, citizens, fellow countrymen: Tear down these "roads" that threaten us all! Go back to rolling around in our glorious dirt, and burn down anything even remotely Roman (even if it contains water, such as aquaducts, don't even get me started on those).
So you want to suppress the internet because of cyber-warfare? How about suppressing cars because there are car accidents? Or suppressing humanity because humans get diseases?
When something new comes to light, new problems appear with it. Intelligent people try to solve the problems. Idiots try to suppress the new thing.
Incidentally, this guy's opinion is published far and wide thanks to the internet. Oh the irony...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Having read TFA, I am forced to conclude that if I could, I would repeal the printing press.
See, the printing press gave rise to mass publishing. Mass publishing gave rise to newspapers. Which in turn led to the Washington Post. Which in turn led to the ability of somebody as atrociously stupid as Robert J. Samuelson to find a mass audience for his idiocy.
Or is that not going far enough. If we're going to be truly safe, do we need to repeal writing?
Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
The Cold War passed, and exactly 12 years of prosperity, along with unbridled & blooming innovation, followed. Until 9/11/2001. We have, since, been sliding into what seems more and more to become as much of a status quo as the Cold War was: the Information War.
Many are struggling to adapt to the new mindset required to cope with this new paradigm, as German Federal Chancellor Merkel illustrated by likening the US eavesdropping and bugging practices to "Cold War practice". The Information War is taking up speed: information is nearly free-flowing over the internet - and at the stake of conflict itself.
I can imagine, hence, the confusion and revulsion of Samuelson, who must have somehow - like most of us did - settled for a world in a state of seemingly permanent Cold War. War has never, or hardly ever, been about infrastructure, and such Samuelson's text is far off the mark. War has always been about either assets or power, and the asset now at stake is: information. It must be hard, for people of Samuelson's generation, to get that into their heads, although they better do - lest they lose fundamental understanding of what our world has become, and is becoming ever faster: an always-shifting patchwork of information sinks and sources.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Let me explain.
First he admits the benefits the Internet brings :-
Then he explains why he thinks the Internet is bad :-
Take note of his key objection - he fears that essential utilities/services would be easily disrupted because they are connected to the Internet.
Point 1- Easy solution, disconnect these essential utilities/services from the Internet!
Point 2- If these essential utilities/services cannot be disconnected from the Internet without some loss of function, they would not have been able to enjoy the same function if the Internet never existed.
I do not blame the writer for this article, he is primarily an economics reporterand appears to have been taken in by the fearmongering flogged by all those who have an agenda to promote cyberwarfare capabilities. I do however blame the Washington Post for allowing such drivel to be posted under their name. They should have known better.
And if you want to argue that, then you want to actually argue against the printing press. I cannot remember the book or author, Vonnegut I think, had a good bit about how prior to the printing press knowledge was something like the martial arts: You had to work on it,sweat, spend your time and effort, often a lifetime to attain it. Your mastery died with you. For each person, learning something required an apprenticeship, basically.
The printing press changed all that. Now ideas could be made permanent, and disseminated. Now people didn't have to discover everything themselves or learn from what masters they could, they could get information and then build on it. They could stand on the shoulders of giants, as Newton said. So when a genius like Newton came along and advanced the knowledge of mathematics, physics and optics by probably 100 years or more, it wasn't something just limited to him and perhaps those that studied with him, the world could learn.
If you think that there needs to be a lot of effort for information, well then the printing press is your enemy, because that is what it became easy. Not as easy as it is now, but pre and post printing press was a bigger difference than pre and post Internet.
It is also necessary if you want to keep advancing things. There's really only so much time one person has to learn, only so much information they can soak up so fast. So if things are going to continue to get more complex and require more information, then we are going to need easy access to that information.