Sixteenth Blog

           We are already at the point where our technology controls us rather than vice versa. Just think about it.

            Almost all of you in our class said your cell phone is more important to you than a car is. Imagine if you had no cell phone or laptop. Everyone else expects you to communicate that way. Imagine trying to find an old-school telephone, better yet if what you found was so old it had a ring-dial system. Imagine writing a letter – how good is your handwriting, by the way? Do you remember how to properly address and stamp an envelope as you learned to do in Kindergarten? And once you have that down, where will you send it? Do you know where to find addresses and phone numbers in white pages and yellow books? Imagine trying to use transportation – how will you find a map without google, and can you properly read one?

            Imagine going to school without electricity. I can actually tell you a story of what that is like. During a snowstorm in 2012 (just after Hurricane Sandy hit,) the power went out, and so what did the school do? They just sent us home. Although to its credit there were safety hazards considering low-light conditions and the inclement weather, the school’s primary concern was that teachers could not carry out their lessons. We used projector screens in place of chalkboards, and everything – slides, dittos, attendance, everything on paper you can think of necessary in a school environment – was trapped under the hard drives. They called the busses in to take us home, and my driver laughed at us on the way there. “We would still be having class if this happened to us.”

            Our neck is virtually under a towering guillotine right now in terms of national security. Ever see Live Free or Die Hard? Cyberwarfare is becoming a matter of increasingly great interest in the military’s eyes, and rightly so. Imagine an attack on our cyber-infrastructure – satellites, telecommunication towers, ISPs, electric grids, anything you can think of. We rely on China for just about all of our goods, even for our military supplies: ships and aircraft, included. Supposedly, if relations between us went south, they could simply “hit a switch under their desk” and remotely deactivate our electronics. Mayhem would indeed befall us, and our enemies will be laughing at us in the Fimbulwinter.

            Oh, what an age we live in. Judgement Day, when?