There was a post over on the cnet blogs this morning by Dennis O’Reilly where he was talking about the newest web threat called clickjacking (isn’t that just so urban and cute). This new threat (PC only at the moment) doesn’t care which browser you are using or whether you have javascript disabled because all it takes is simply clicking on a link to infect your computer with some sort of malware.
While Dennis was really talking about a specific type of Internet safety it got me thinking about the larger idea of being safe on the web and really how ridiculous that idea is.
You can run all the security software you want, governments can try all the legislation they want and lawyers can sue as much as they like the fact is that the Internet has never been and never will be a safe place. Part of the disconnect we have that leads to this delusion of being able to enforce some kind of safety is that we think that the Internet is a separate entity from our physical lives.
This is why we say things like online, offline or cyberspace, meatspace. We are trying to make ourselves think that our daily world we move through is separate and distinct from the electronic one we spend a growing amount of time in.
It’s not.
In the beginning due to its rarity the Internet may have been a separate entity but that has changed and now it is more of an extension of our daily lives. We weave it seamlessly amongst our daily activities without even blinking an eye and this will only become more prevalent as we move forward.
Due to the increased mobility of our society through the use of cell phones that are close to doubling for mobile computing platforms and the increasing web of WiFi networks we are no longer tied though an electronic umbilical cord to a stationary place.
With this ubiquity of the Internet it is inevitable that it mimics all the aspects of our society. It doesn’t matter how politically correct we have tried to make our world. It doesn’t matter how hard we have tried to keep everyone under the ever present eye of the growing police state. Bad things are and will always be done by bad people. Throughout the total history of mankind people have been doing bad things to other people and even though we might like to believe that we are better than our history it is stupid to think so.
I am not suggesting that we not protect the young and the weak – the stupid can fend for themselves – but to think that we will be able to turn this electronic mirror image of ourselves into some new kind of perfect society is ridiculous and dangerous. Just as our non-electronic world is sometimes unkind and dangerous so is the electronic version we have created in our own image.
And maybe that isn’t such a bad thing.
