Interwhuuuut? (Entry 1)

The other day, I was in the school gym and Under One Roof was on the TV. It was the episode that Ronnie acquired a computer and was charging people to use it, eventually running a mini-cybercafe in his kitchen. For the life of me, I can't remember when this aired, but I reckon it was before 2000. That aside, what struck me was the look of wonder and astonishment that everyone had on their faces when they first laid their eyes on a personal computer with Internet access, the wide-eyes "Is that a computer?" look. You'd never get that look nowadays, and it's taken for granted that every computer that we encounter has Internet access.

Everett Rogers' theory of diffusion of innovations talks about the five groups of people that adopt new innovations and technologies in different stages: Innovators, Ealy Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority and Laggards. Laggards are usually the most pessimistic, conservative bunch of people who are usually resistant to change, especially new technologies. Yet, we can clearly see that the Internet is being used by even then. It has become as staple to us as mobile phones or newspapers, and just like those things, there are the very small minority of people who still don't want to bother with it.

I guess some of these people have no use for it, like senior citizens (although some do use the Internet). Some don't use it because of their lifestyle, like the Amish. And some people refuse to use it because they don't want to become enslaved and restricted by technology. That's where we come in and say that not using technology, inclusive of and especially the Internet, is the thing that actually enslaves us because it restricts our possibilities and opportunities in a tech-savvy world.

However, do these people have a point? Are we too dependent on technology and computers, not just individuals, but societies and governments? The 2007 movie Live Free or Die Hard suggests the scenario of a "fire sale", in which computer hackers attack a country's economy, transportation, communications and government, thereby effectively crippling the nation. All this is stated as plausible because all of these systems depend on connections and records that fully utilize technology and the Internet. It's a rather scary concept, everything around you just suddenly ceasing to work.

Let's consider that on a smaller scale: what if Facebook, our beloved social networking site, suddenly and permanently shut down? That is a concept that seems to be very real, considering this message from the hacker group Anonymous:




Quite freaky, to say the least. How does that make you feel?


Let me know in the comments section down below!