New Scientist has an article about the launch of a global internet laboratory, PlanetLab, that simulates tens of thousands of virtual users at more than 60 companies and universities.
It will be used to test new weapons for fighting internet worms and to develop better distributed computer programs, i.e. those that operate on many machines at once. It will also be used to engineer smarter protocols for the next-generation internet. Shankar Sastry, at UC Berkeley says:
The PlanetLab test bed will be an important addition to cyber security research efforts across the country. The ability to conduct cyber-security research on a global scale will have major consequences.
This is wonderful stuff. I am not an expert and cannot tell whether these kind of simulations can be accurate enough to be relevant to the real world battle for cyber-security. Probably yes. What I love about it is people coming together pushing the bounderies of technological progress. Never satisfied with the cutting edge, always reaching for the bleeding edge. That is part of our Western capitalist tradition.
The occasion of this unexpected eulogy to technology and progress was this bit of news read in the conjuction with the above article:
The Pakistani newspaper, The News, quoted a Taliban spokesman as saying Mullah Omar announced the formation of the body [ed. Rahbari Shura, leadership council] in an audio tape sent from his hiding place in Afghanistan. In the tape, Mullah Omar called on the Taliban to make sacrifices to drive out U.S. and other foreign troops and the “puppet” government of U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai:
Now jihad will be waged against the U.S. and allied forces under a new military strategy.
This is bad news, not because Mullah Omar is frightening me, but because more deluded young muslims will latch onto his fundamentalist railings and die needlessly. What struck me was that this raving fundo uses audio tapes to broadcast his callings for jihad and extermination of Westerners. The technology would probably have never been invented had his ilk had their way. It is the very civilisation and culture he fights so benightedly, that enables him to be heard and spread his poisonous propaganda. Fortunately, Western civilisation fosters progress and innovation and will in the end win the unequal battle.
Yet more praises for the enslaving force of technology. It seems our techno-capitalist hell just can’t put the brakes on technological imperialism. How I look forward to that day when we’re all forced to “enhance” our brains with implants and the like. It’s going to be an equally great day when we’re all fighting over scraps of food waste because artificially intelligent machines have been enslaved in our place to make the ruling classes that much more wealthy. Yep, I think I’ll just retreat to the love cave and forget all of this technological bullshit.
What is the Matrix? Eh? Eh?
X: Thanks for sharing that with us via technological e-mail, which you have learnt to use during your antibiotic enhanced non-subsistance food fueled life. But please feel free to go live in some third world shit hole where you are not ‘enslaved’ by technology. Idiot.
What does this mean:
What is the Matrix? Eh? Eh?
We may already be living inside The Matrix!
I didn’t have the Matrix in mind you fascist twits. Try reading up on advances in nanotechnology and artificial intelligence if you want to see why we’re heading into a technological dystopia. Read authors like Ray Kurzweil and Hans Moravec for their delightful views concerning the eradication of the human race and nature in general. Read about the dangers of nano-assemblers, a technology that could lead to an arms race that could make nukes look about as dangerous as sling-shots. You people and your embrace of technology. Idiots.
X, can you please refrain from insulting invectives. If you cannot make your point without them, please take your rants elsewhere.
They have to use audio tapes because many of their audience are illiterate. They’ve jumped two generations of communication technology with destructive results.