The Yin and Yang of the Internet

Chatting, downloading, surfing, uploading -- our Internet usage is oftentimes limited to these activities.

But who knows that we can actually do much more scary stuff with the Internet? And I'm not even talking about running an online prostitution website.

The documentary that Ma'am Data had us watch last meeting showed two faces of the power of the Internet. If there's yin, there's yang. Fire to cook, fire to burn. Water to drink, water to drown. Things can be used for something positive, but can also be used for something negative.

The Internet does not escape this seemingly universal law.

On the "bright side," the Internet can be used to feed information to citizens of countries the governments of which control information so as to avoid the dissemination of unpleasant news to preserve the stability of the state and maintain the power of the rulers. Haystack, for instance, allows Internet users of these information-controlling countries to logon to sites.

(I had to put double quotes on "bright side" because in our perspective, this could be a good thing. But I don't want to impose my perspective on the Iranians and Chinese.)

On the "dark side," the Internet can be used to digitally bully other countries. There's this case shown in the documentary where it took one Russian guy to cripple the country of Estonia using the Internet.

(Same reason I placed double quotes on "dark side").

So, as a country that is not yet very wired to the Internet, is the Philippines safe from all these cyber-attacks? That's the good thing about not being very dependent to the Internet, I guess.

But you know what un-wired countries like us are prone to be victims of?

Since the masses still tune in to the radio and television to get their information, and these two media are not as "democratic" as the Internet, deciding what information gets breastfed to the people is still in the hands of a few, select oligarchs.