Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Egypt Drops Dime, Pulls Plug On Internet
The government of Egypt has acted to cut off almost every form of Internet traffic into and out of the country. Cellphone networks were also disrupted.
Renesys, a Vermont-based company that tracks Internet traffic, said that just after midnight Cairo time, or 5 p.m. New York time, Egyptian authorities had succeeded in shutting down the country’s international access points.
“Almost nobody in Egypt has Internet connectivity, and there are no workarounds,” said Jim Cowie, the company’s chief technology officer. “I’ve never seen it happen at this scale.”
“In a fundamental sense, it’s as if you rewrote the map and they are no longer a country,” said Mr. Cowie. “I never thought it would happen to a country the size and scale of Egypt.”
In most countries, the points of access to the global Internet infrastructure are many and distributed. But Mr. Cowie said that Egypt was relatively late in widely adopting the Internet, so it has fewer access points. The government can shut these down with “six, or even four phone calls,” he said.
SF fans have been prepared for this possibility since 1975, when John Brunner published The Shockwave Rider. In the story, the government has prepared a way to take down the Internet in the event of enemy occupation.
I was also trying to imagine what the Internet feels like when a country-sized piece of its memory is removed:
Egypt has been trying to contain growing protests that have been fueled in part by videos and other information shared over social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
... the worm that prevents the Fedcomps from monitoring calls to Hearing Aid, and the similar but larger one that was released at Weychopee—Electric Skillet—to shut down the net in the event of enemy occupation: those are designed to lay dormant until tampered with.
(Read more about Brunner's net shutdown worm)
(HAL-9000 has his memory modules removed)
In a related story, US citizens should read this story on the 2009 Cybersecurity Act.
Via NYTimes.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 1/28/2011)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 1 )
Related News Stories - (" Culture ")
Switzerland May Cap Population At Ten Million
'The population of Castle Hagedorn was fixed...' - Jack Vance, 1967.
California Governor Candidate Calls For Voting By Phone
'... every veephone on the continent would display, over and over, two propositions.' John Brunner, 1975.
Chinese Hospital Tries Vonnegut's 'Harrison Bergeron' Cosplay
'He wore spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half
blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.' - Kurt Vonnegut, 1961.
A Remarkable Coincidence
'There is a philosophical problem of some difficulty here...' - Arthur C. Clarke, 1953.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
Unitree CEO Wang Xingxing Runs With His G1 Robot Army
'Does thinking you're the last sane man on the face of the Earth make you crazy?'
AIs Turn Marxist Under Bad Management
'It was a general strike of the robots...'
Moscow Attacked By Hundreds Of Drones
'It hurtled on down with inconceivable speed until it was visible as thousands of tiny robot planes...'
Nifty Folding Electric Bicycles!
'Separate paths were provided for them...'
FTC: Says Ring Employees Illegally Surveilled Customers
'Then she looked up with a smile and moved closer to the camera.'
Switzerland May Cap Population At Ten Million
'The population of Castle Hagedorn was fixed...'
Project Silica Offers 'Long-Term' Digital Storage
'... folios and tapes and playable discs of platinum alloy.'
Can 'Tactical Umbrellas' Shield One From Drones
'... another corner of his mind began to think about the shields.'
Crystalline Structures In Space, You Say?
A massive space borne lifeform from ST:TNG.
Garçon! A Menu For Artemis II, S'il Vous Plaît
'Michel Ardan, as a Frenchman, was declared chief cook, an important function, which raised no rival.'
Amazing Photonic Crystal Light Sail
'That sail will be twenty thousand miles at the wide part.'
Blue Collar AI Goes To Work To Mine Its Own Crypto
Blue collar bot.
Rogue AI Replicated Itself
'Sapiro’s computer just kept dialing at random, hanging up on humans, until it got a fellow computer of the same type as itself.'
HandelBot Helps Two-Handed Robots Learn Piano
'I request that you feed the correlation between those dots and the levers of the panel into my memory banks.'
Woven Fiber Electronic Skin For Robots
'... all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
When AI Takes Its First Breath
Any suggestions?
