July 11, 2009, Hack-tacular
No, I'm not talking about right-wing punditry, but in a long overdue visit to our friends at Pravda, this brief piece on last week's cyber-attacks on key governmental websites in South Korea and the United States [ attacks which seem to be ongoing... possibly attributable to forces in... North Korea... ]
While the Pravda discussion is a tad superficial (translation issues may be in play), the point is well-taken: we are in an era when it will get ever easier to impose potentially catastrophic damage on others remotely, without even having to get one's hands dirty with a "traditional" WMD... and we won't even talk about how easier and easier it is becoming to get one's hands on (such as, by manufacturing a designer bio- or chem-weapon) such "traditional" WMDs.
We have to wake up to the fact that there is a yin and yan to everything: while computerization of the world has been a marvel in a great many senses, it opens up a number of Pandora's boxes of potential horrors (remember how worried everyone was about "Y2K"?) I realize that was "so 1999"... but we were sure as hell worried... ever think about... this Simpsons episode?
Anyway, I guess we have to realize that just 40 years ago (when it was "so 1969") we landed a man on the moon mostly using slide-rules (and the entire world's computing power was probably less than you have in your I-phone right now)... I'm trying to say that by and large, these things are "non-essential"... much of the world doesn't even have electricity or indoor plumbing... life can go on anyway. And if some hacker puts us back to some "pre-industrial phase"... our lives really can go on... and at the rate we're going, we should really learn to live that way, just as a matter of sensible "planned redundancy". Keep some water around, learn to fix your bike, make sure that "kitchen garden" can grow some stuff you might actually want to eat, a sewing kit or two around the house might be good...
Just saying. This has been: "Hack-tacular."
Comments
Yeah, the axis of evil, bet they were the ones that cut the internet cables in the Mediterranean a while back.
You get any speculative "news," it is a LIE. If you believe it you are a FOOL.
I've never believed one damn word about 9/11 and the aftermath except a post in Canada that reports the Canadian dead.
Posted by evil is evil at July 11, 2009 10:06 PM
It has long been my contention that the Y2K nuts had it right, they just didn't quite get their fingers wrapped around it.
The End of "America", 9/11 was Reichtag.
Posted by Ten Bears at July 12, 2009 9:12 PM