My heart weighs heavy right now. I am irritable and nervous, my disheveled hair curling wildly and now hanging in front of my eyes after a few good runs with my sweaty hand. Running my hand through my hair works well, though. It calms me down.
But I cannot stay calm. The share of the T1 connection I subscribe to in my tiny dorm room is not working, and my blood pressure seemingly rises with each minute. The vast amount of information that was at my fingertips an hour ago is gone. My file-swapping programs are useless. The databases, news archives and commercial Web sites I can no longer access taunt me from the other side of my Ethernet wire. Communication with the outside world, besides the phone that sits quietly in the corner of my room, has been cut off completely.
Save for the thumping of my heart, the linoleum-floored room I live in is completely silent. A sort of somber quiet descended onto my shoulders when I realized I am almost completely incapacitated.
Sometimes loss of Internet access debilitates a person more than anything else could, and when that normally dependable source of information and communication is taken unexpectedly from beneath us, we are left completely vulnerable. Dependence on the Internet, wireless networks and other technologically advanced systems symbolize incredible innovation. Ironically, dependence simultaneously highlights itself as one of the United States’ main weaknesses.
The so-called Y2K crisis many news organizations prophesied never came to pass. But if there ever were such a bug that actually caused damage on that sort of scale, or a cyber-terrorist attack on the U.S. government’s main computer systems, the world could plunge into chaos.
It’s almost funny to think of the bizarre situations predicted for Y2K: automatic teller machines spitting out $100 bills, social security records completely deleted. The scenarios were absurd, but frightening not just in their absurdity, but their plausibility as well. We are a culture used to instant gratification. Live video is no longer a great novelty, but an everyday occurrence. Broadband Internet is quickly replacing dial-up services. And a bug as bad as the Y2K was expected to be would spell catastrophe for a wired nation.
According to the CIA World Factbook, there were 166 million Internet users in 2001 in the United States, which means there now are more than 166 million potential targets. New viruses and worms are produced constantly, as just last week a SQL worm infected systems around the country, shutting down networks and Web sites (including LSU’s). If such a worm were more robust, it would knock more systems offline, resulting in even more insanity.
Perhaps the United States ought to place ensuring the safety of its computer systems very high on its list of priorities, as dependence on the Internet appears to be something that will continue into the future.
So when you patiently wait to sign onto your instant messaging system and a message similar to “The network cannot be reached,” greets you, don’t get angry with your Internet service provider, but hope that a brilliant hacker hasn’t unleased the perfect virus.