The End of the World

Reading today’s headlines unrest in the world is splattered across newspapers, from the New York Times to the Washington Post. Headlines, which include major complications occurring throughout Egypt and now Libya. The most interesting thing to note once you get past the shock and the horror associated with thousands of people suffering from terrorism is how these groups are functioning and communicating, through the Internet. In the communications age where we live today it is frightening to think of the way this technology can be manipulated in order to cause harm to huge groups of people. Terrorists, are now banding together through the information highway known as the Internet and organizing in order to get their fundamental issues and cause harm to innocent bystanders. In “When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth” we see the Internet as the only way of communication left after a huge massive nuclear strike on the entire world. We can directly relate this back to today where it is 

entirely plausible to imagine people rallying through the Internet, as we see with these new terrorist groups. People today know the Internet is huge resource to the community and so if it was the only way of surviving then people in the technologic field would do about anything to keep the that medium open. With the “Machine” I feel the emphasis is more on the actual machine as related to a God, at one instance it is even pointed out “You mustn’t say anything against the machine”(The machine). This takes on a sort of human nature where we cannot even think to go against some device. This is a different contrast to Doctorow’s works where while the Internet is shown in a light of great need and a helpful resource, eventually in the end of the story the men and women have to venture out on their own with out technology. There are a few people in the computer industry who feel it would hamper our quality of life dramatically were we to take away the Internet and I feel it would be taking away the future of the world, whether good or bad, it’s a place to organize and fight for what you want.