C5: Internet

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Soul surfing

The First stop online is God. Like everyone else religious groups are rushing into cyberspace, setting up church and synagogue home pages, establishing theological newsgroups, bulletin boards and chat rooms. The electronic community has quickly become a high-speed spiritual bazaar, where thousands of the faithful - and equal numbers of the faithless - meet, debate and swap ideas in a way that has never been done in the public domain. Theological issues are fiercely debated by people with very different beliefs from all walks of life.

Inevitably, evangelism is booming. God is being sold in thousands of websites in an astonishing variety of ways to millions of potential believers. Evangelical religions have always harnessed the technologies of their times to spread their messages. First the written word, then the printed word, then radio and television and now the Internet.

Jews have had a slightly different approach. Evangelism was never an issue, but education always was. Any new method of allowing for and encouraging more study has been embraced by our people. Our ancestors avidly etched on clay tablets and papyrus scrolls. A thousand years later they were involved in the first printing presses and today huge amounts of Jewish texts have been put onto CD ROM. Television and radio are more to do entertainment and so have not been used so much. Jewish educators see new technologies as opportunities for textual study in a different medium as opposed to evangelists who see them as a new way to reach lost souls.

Crime Online

In raid after raid, the police are seizing not just guns and drugs but also computer discs, monitors and modems. Illegal gambling across the Net is a multibillion dollar international scam. With rotating shifts of "wire men" working the phones and with hard drives capable of processing thousands of "marks" a week, the electrobookies cover bets of millions of dollars a year. And for groups as disparate as the Columbian drug cartels and Chinese Triads, computers have become essential for running their booming businesses and protecting them from the prying eyes of the law. "This is where the future is," says the FBI's James Kallstrom, who has been chasing the Mob for more than 20 years. "All of society is turning to technology. It would be naive to say that criminal groups aren't."

Real hate

Racism is rampant in this new electronic world. Extreme nationalist groups all over the world are posting hate messages to millions of unsuspecting Net users. They have newsgroups dedicated to discussing their racist views and filling the screen with rewrites of history that encourage prejudice and discrimination. They see cyberspace as fertile territory to spread their hate.

If you try and stop these people by answering back or calling for support to fight them, you are endanger of receiving hundreds of hate email messages a day that will really scare you from continuing your attack. The free flow of information over the Net has allowed hatemongers to spread lies about racial and ethnic minorities all over the globe. Reading their material is frightening and the number of racist web sites grows daily. Again, authorities in Europe and America are concerned, but the Net is too perfectly pre-programmed for free speech to be controlled.

Intimate Strangers

The Internet has become more than a communications device, it is now a hyper emotional hunting ground. The truth is that the vast majority of people who are exploring cyberspace are in search of social interaction not just sterile information. An estimated 80% of all users are looking for contact and commonality, companionship and community. Relationships can be complicated in cyberspace because the very technology that draws most people together also keeps them apart. Over time, the safe sense of distance that initially seems so liberating to newcomers on the Net can become an obstacle to deepening the bonds of friendship, romance and community.

At some point, most net-friends often find, the only real way to move a relationship forward is to risk personal contact, and then hope the virtual bond will hold up in the 3-D world. "You can't lead a total life online," says Dave Hughes, founder of the Old Colorado City Electronic Cottage, a cyber-settlement. "But if it's done right, online communications can lead to face-to-face contact, not away from it." Indeed people whose first contact was over a wire have now tied the knot, some getting wed online! Unfortunately, many don't get anywhere near that and the Net mostly acts as an escape world where people can be who they want to be and say what they want to say to whoever they like. They are to afraid to do this in the real world and try to hide in what they think is an electronic utopia.

Cyberwars

Washington is learning to fight offending tyranny with a series of thoroughly modern plagues, born of mice, video screens and keyboards. First, a computer virus is inserted into the aggressor's telephone-switching stations, causing widespread failure of the phone system. Next, computer logic bombs, set to activate at predetermined times, destroy the electronic routers that control railway lines and military convoys, thus misrouting transporters and causing jams. Meanwhile, enemy field officers obey the orders they receive over their radios, unaware the commands are faked. Their troops are rendered ineffective as they scatter bewilderedly through the battlefields. U.S. planes, specially outfitted for psychological operations, then jam the enemy's TV broadcasts with propaganda messages that turn the populace against its ruler. When the despot boots up his PC, he finds that the millions of dollars he has hoarded in his Swiss bank account have been zeroed out. Zapped. All without firing a shot. They are now trying to stop wars before they start but more probably they will be using their new found abilities to wage war in whole new ways. None of these efforts is theoretical, all the technology is already in place and new military ideas are not short of money to try them out.

Cyberporn

Pornography and erotica is already prominent in books, magazines, music videos, films and TV, but it's appearance on the Net is causing an uproar. The fear is the ease of accessibility for the under age. As every school in the country is being linked up to the Internet, and more and more families become PC owners with online facilities, it is getting very easy for the very young to find sex on the Net. There are already news reports of kids trading porno-disks in the school playground and there are hundreds of websites to choose from which display this material. Some argue that this issue is being exaggerated. The chances of randomly finding this stuff are very slim and real life dangers to children are much more important. Others are extremely worried especially because it is the children in most families who are the computer experts. Also, the Net by its very nature, is built to work around censorship and blockage. What was once the interest of "adults only" is now easily accessible by young children.

A few American based companies have come up with 'Safety Net' products for parents to buy that allows them to filter what their computers can connect to. Net Nanny constantly eyes a computer's software gateway to the Net and throws out whatever content parents tell it to. The easy-to-use setup also lets adults freeze the "upchannel" flow of personal data like phone numbers or credit card information. Meanwhile SurfWatch takes a different approach: it consults an often updated database of offensive sites as it decides what to block. The programme comes loaded with security features so that even the toughest junior hacker will have trouble breaking out.

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