Speculations on a probable future destruction
of the
internet
by Zakaria Bziker
Kenitra,
Internet after
all is not without enemies…
The Internet has become the Archimedean point in our daily life. Almost nothing gets done without
it nowadays. The more we rely on it, the more it seems impossible to live
without it. It is undoubtedly the most reliable machine Man has ever made.
However, could this blind dependence of ours in itself be a threat to mankind?
Are we investing too much in this new medium that we are risking to lose too
much if we ever were to live without it?
Why
is the Internet so successful? How does it invade all aspects of life? The
Internet, as a matter of fact, is the only manmade machine that has an organic
structure. The way everything is wired up is unbelievably complex. Seeing that
it has this organic structure, it seems to fit the properties of vitalism
perfectly, and all aspects of human daily life. It fits the structure of
society and how people connect to each other.
Life spreads by networking. The body itself is an information
processor. Memory resides not just in brains but in every cell. No wonder
genetics bloomed along with information theory.
-
Gleick (2011:07)
Every
newly added part, be it a computer or a smartphone for example, fits perfectly
within the larger whole of the global network without disrupting the function
of the rest of its parts, just like organic living cells. This is because “the
whole is greater than the sum of its parts” (Aristotle 384-22 BC). Besides, the
Internet could also be seen as a virtual reduplication of society and reality
as a whole. Therefore, it enjoys social compatibility.
The
Internet is capable of acquiring new intelligences, which is an aspect of the
human brain. There is always room for improvement, but if its success is not
due to its organic structure, then maybe it is due to the fact that Internet is
an efficient tool that circulates, measures, organizes and processes
information, boosting human knowledge. Thus, the Internet is unique for its
potential to store and easily access human knowledge and above all, its promise
for the ideal democracy.
Could this huge machine we call the Internet be something ephemeral in
human history? Is it possible that somehow it may not be around in the near
future? Most people go about their daily lives as if Internet has always been
here and always will be. However, its success and mere presence are not proof
of its permanence. It would be unwise to think it will always be around.
Actually, we have no guarantee that it will. It is evident that it is so
reliable but yet at the same time it is so vulnerable. Its destruction is a
legitimate probability although there isn’t much fuss about it.
Thanks to its omnipresence, the Internet has redefined the concept of
power. On one hand it has empowered the people; structured them and unified
their voices. Power is no longer strictly identified by missiles and bullets,
but rather by ideas and people. On the other hand, the Internet has also
empowered governments. It has enabled them with new ways of censoring,
controlling, and manipulating people. This makes the thousands-years-long
strife between governments and citizens even more intense.
…this has obviously empowered individuals in a broad and complex set
of ways, but as our lives become more and more dependent on the internet, it
has also provided governments with a single point of contact for nearly
ubiquitous surveillance.
-
Kevin Drum (2013)
The
Internet plays in favor of both parties. This can make the suppressed and
overpowered party, be it the citizen or government, target the very same weapon
with which the one in power exerts power. Using Egypt as an example, it
is almost unthinkable to picture the Egyptian uprising without social
networking. When the government awoke to the danger of the people protesting,
they immediately shut down the Internet and cellphone services as a form of
resistance on January 28th 2011, OECD (2013:36).
In
contrast, a worldwide rage among citizens of some countries is growing over the
fact that their governments are trying to sensor the Internet. Consequently,
movements and organizations such as Anonymous and Wikileaks have emerged and
threatened many governments as well as Internet security. The possibilities are
endless to what the masses can do when they are upset, as history has shown.
It would, perhaps, be shocking for citizens of respected democratic
states to discover that foreign forces were influencing their lives in small
but meaningful ways. It’s a universal issue and one that is highly
controversial by its nature and though its sheer audacity.
-
Bilal Khalid (2012)
In
the two given examples above, it is shown how governments and citizens alike
can constitute a threat to Internet stability. It seems it is the Internet that
is primarily targeted whenever one party reacts. This sort of struggle between
governments and the people is not ending anytime soon, and it can, and may,
have huge repercussion with the presence of the Internet in the near future if
things escalated. Now, with that being said, and since globalization is pushing
us towards a single one-world government, let us apply this small incident of
Egypt on a larger scale. What would happen if all citizens were at odds with
the governments over power?
Similarly,
what if the Internet granted citizens unconditional freedom that would threaten
the firm grasp governments have over their people? Wouldn’t the Internet be
susceptible of being the cost of this struggle for control? Wouldn’t it be, and
maybe it is, the battlefield that is at the risk of its own destruction?
Weapons by nature inherently bear the seeds of their own destruction, and the
Internet is being used as a weapon– a very vulnerable one. No one would care
about the survival of the Internet as long as its survival intervenes with
one’s own interests. Internet after all is not without enemies. The more
technology advances, the more we meet those longing for antiquity and the
medieval life when things used to be simple. Ultimately, if the Internet were
really to be destructed, it would be destructed not despite of, but because of
its success.
If
the threat does not come from amongst ourselves, it can very well come from the
outside. While browsing the Internet we don’t worry about what’s happening in
the center of our galaxy or on the surface of the sun. Getting used to seeing
the sun rises every morning at a precise and predictable time makes us forget
that the earth is actually floating in a violent and brutal universe filled
with random comets and asteroids. Space Weather, for example, can have great
impact on the global communication system, which could potentially put the
entire global connectivity at the mercy of space. Not long ago in 1998, several
satellites blacked out simultaneously because of a sun flare and many services
went down instantly such as web pages and TV channels. Add to that, 12
satellites so far have been lost because of space weather, ESA (2004:05).
We
are affected by the sun’s mood whether we like it or not. We can be subject to
a future massive solar flare just like we are subject to the sun’s rays. The
most gigantic one, known as the Carrington Flare, took place in 1859. It
crippled the telegraphic communication all across North America and Europe.
Computer engineers and space physicists are well aware of what a solar flare
the size of Carrington would do to today’s extremely vulnerable communication
infrastructure.
A major solar event could theoretically melt down the whole Internet.
What earthquakes, bombs, and terrorism cannot do might be accomplished in
moments by a solar corona.
-
Eagleman (2012)
Electromagnetic
storms are very common too. Quebec’s power went down in 1989 for 9 hours
because of one — affecting 6 million people’s lives. The cause of this
geomagnetic storm was a Coronal Mass Ejection from the sun that took place on
March 9th, 1989 and did not reach earth until 4 days after.
From the micro perspective, IBM estimates that there is a new software error
every month in every 256 MB of computer RAM caused by cosmic rays (Ziegler and
Lanford, 1979:19-40, Tom 2008) despite the earth’s magnetic shield. These
cosmic rays are unstoppable charged particles with high energies originating
from the depth of space or the center of the Milky Way.
Now
with the increase of chips miniaturization (Moore’s law), errors are expected
to increase (Tom, 2008) since electronic components will increasingly be
affected by cosmic rays. Let alone the worst-case scenario if the flux of
cosmic rays increased. This confirms the weak spot communication technologies
have vis-à-vis outer space. The earth magnetic field, which serves as a shield
that protects the earth from violent solar flares, has been weakened the past
decade. This is because the earth, as some scientists believe, is at the verge
of a probable pole magnetic reversal (Wicherink, 2008:150), which is not an
unprecedented event in the long history of earth. Thus, the current weak
magnetic field and the vulnerability of our global communication infrastructure
put the Internet at a greater risk of disappearing. On-going events of space
weather can be predicted but only a few days ahead, and there isn’t much we can
about them.
The
Internet can be damaged in different ways. If the damage is not physical it
could be virtual. Cyber-warfare and cyber-terrorism aren’t fictional concepts
but real ones. Because the Internet will own every bit, and because every datum
is connected to one single organism, the whole thing is at the risk of
disappearing in bulk and at once. One single virus might have the potential of
damaging every bit connected to the gigantic web.
We
are living in a digital age in which any new piece of information is primarily
poured into the internet, if not born in it already, before being committed to
paper. In that sense, Internet is not a bunch of wires and servers connecting
people, but there is more to it than just that. The Internet has become
humanity’s huge database that hosts human knowledge. It follows that whatever
harms the Internet would inevitably lead to the loss of human knowledge.
Ironically, one important consequence of the shift to digital
publishing is that it leads to a potential loss of knowledge.
-
Curt Rice (2013).
Such
a horrible event is not unprecedented in human history. Civilizations, such as
the antediluvian civilizations, lost a massive wealth of knowledge in the
remote prehistory (Bauval and Graham, 1996). Even more recently, a similar
event took place in Alexandria with the destruction of the Royal Library of
Alexandria (391 AD), which was the hub of knowledge in the ancient world.
The Internet has proved to be efficient in processing and storing human
knowledge, yet it hasn’t proved to be stable, permanent, or sustainable. The
only reasonable way to store human knowledge is to diversify the means of
storage, which is not something being seriously taken into consideration.
Gathering and centralizing human knowledge into the-binary-system medium isn’t
a clever idea. With all due respect to Claude Shannon, a backup storage with a
medium of a different nature should be going in parallel; books for example.
Why
are we in a state of heedlessness about the probability that the Internet may
not be around in the future? Is it because we never contemplate the idea of a
world without Internet although it always used to be the case? When asked the
question: “What is life to you without internet?” some people responded: Life
then would be “without colors,” “very slow,” “tasteless,” “lifeless,” or “I
would feel locked up in a cell.” According to these sorts of reactions, which
may be the case for the majority, life seems nihilistic without Internet. Is it
possible that the Internet has given new meaning to life? Probably, because it
seems as if the Internet has shifted from being ‘a means’ to being ‘an end’ in
itself, and the slogan nowadays has become, “I am on-line therefore I am”. It
seems we are putting our entire human worth and essence into a lifeless
machine. Freezing all that is vital in us into ‘…01001010110…’
The Internet has empowered people; it has empowered nations, bridged
gaps and brought the world together. However it is now being used to tear the
world apart.
-
Bilal Khalid (2012)
All in all, what does this change? What sort of attitude should we
adopt if we were to approach Internet as something temporary in our life in
particular, and in human history in general?
References
Bauval,
Robert, and Graham Hancock. Keeper of Genesis: a quest for the hidden
legacy of mankind. London: Heinemann, 1996. Print.
Geomagnetic Storms Can Threaten Electric Power Grid, Earth in Space, Vol. 9, No. 7, March, 1997,
pp. 9–11 (American Geophysical Union)
Gleick,
James. The information: a history, a theory, a flood. New York:
Pantheon Books, 2011. Print.
Moore,
Gordon E. (1965). “Cramming more components onto integrated circuits” (PDF).
Electronics Magazine. p. 4. Retrieved 2006-11-11.
MORRIS
Meaghan Elizabeth, “Banality in Cultural Studies”, Logics of Television,
Patricia Mellencamp (ed.), pp. 14 -43, Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1990
OECD e-government studies: Egypt 2012. Paris: OECD, 2013. Print.
Tom
Simonite, Should every computer chip have a cosmic ray detector?,
New Scientist, March 2008
Wicherink,
J., and N. Haddon. Souls of Distortion Awakening: a convergence of
science and spirituality. Eindhoven: Piramidions, 1032008. Print.
Ziegler,
J.F. (Jan 1996). “Terrestrial cosmic rays”. IBM Journal of Research and
Development (IBM) 40 (1): 19–40.
Websites
“Space Weather effect” ESA Space Weather Web Server. The European Space Agency, 1 Dec. 2004. Web. 8 Nov. 2013.
Bilal Khalid, Muhammad. “The Internet – A Tool of Power and Control.” Bertelsmann Future Challenges The Internet A Tool of Power and Control Comments. N.p., 22 June 2012. Web. 25 Oct. 2013.
Drum, Kevin. “Quote of the Day: Control Over the Internet Is the “Struggle of Our Generation“.” Motherjones.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Oct. 2013.
Eagleman, David . “Four ways the Internet could go down” – CNN, n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2013.
Rice, Curt. “How the internet can make knowledge disappear and 2 ways to stop it.” Curt Rice. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Oct. 2013.
Taky Eddine, Omar. “Reflection on on-screen vs. print reading.” Morocco World News RSS. N.p., 9 Oct. 2013. Web. 9 Nov. 2013.
Oussama Bziker, Sami Alioua, Somaya Bahji, Amina Bakassi, Abdelmajid Bahimi. Interviewed by Zakaria Bziker. Kenitra, Morocco. Nov 5th, 2013.
Zakaria Bziker is a student at Ibn-Tofail University (Kenitra, Morocco), currently pursuing a master’s degree in Education. He Obtained his bachelor’s degree in General Linguistics.
From Morocco World News @ http://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2013/11/113469/speculations-on-a-probable-future-destruction-of-the-internet/
For more information about the effects of solar flares see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/solar%20flares
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