Senior Seminar

  In 2003, Two years after 9/11, National Security Agency (NSA) reached out to American Telephone And Telegraph (AT&T) company and said "Hey! So we were thinking, it'd be real nice if you can let us listen in on a few phone calls and monitor some internet activity - you know, for national security and all." AT&T replied "Hmm - you make a very convincing argument, well, how much of it are you planning to monitor?" NSA replied back: "We did our research and conducted investigations, according to us, monitoring 100% of online and on-phone activity inside and outside of US will make us feel much better!" AT&T shook hands. Enter: Room 641A. Or actually don't - it's not safe. Room 641A was one of the most secretive telecommunication interception facility commencing operations in 2003 as part of the warrantless surveillance program, authorized by the Patriot Act. It was largely kept secret until the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) fil...

In 2000, William Nelson Joy (Bill Joy) wrote in "Wired" :  Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won't be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide. Bill Joy was an internet and computer pioneer. Joy's predictions were very ahead of its time. This article was written 21 years ago. We have effectively reached a point in just two decades where we are now completely and utterly dependable on one of the many man-made machines: The internet. Even though the mechanism required to "start" or "stop" the Internet isn't technically as complex as just cutting a wire maybe but the economy as a whole is so dependent on the infrastructure that shutting down the internet is ess...