The clean war? – In their 1985 novel WarDay, Whitley Strieber and Jim Kunetka explored the results of a possible limited nuclear war and found that while it was likely that the human race would survive, we would find ourselves in a much more limited world. Now the Pentagon is exploring the possibility of a cyber war. However, given the fact that so much of the world’s information is stored on computers, we may not survive that one well either.
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PAINT it out! – People with portable laptops are always looking for cafes and coffee shops that offer wifi. But after the “Wikileaks” scandal, where a website recently published 76,000 secret US military logs detailing military actions in Afghanistan, some offices want avoid this type of conspiracy in the future by making it IMPOSSIBLE to use the internet at work. How to do this? Use “anti wi-fi PAINT.”
This new paint blocks out wireless signals, meaning that computer users can block spies without having to encrypt their messages in order to avoid being hacked. The paint contains an aluminum-iron oxide which resonates at the same frequency as wi-fi (or other radio waves), so that the airborne data is absorbed and blocked.
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As we finally exit Iraq, we are leaving some soldiers behind, but what we are leaving behind that is really important is the internet, because studies have shown that there can be no modern democracies without it.
As the last combat troops withdraw from Iraq, the country’s citizens are left to sort out their future. New research shows that digital media, such as mobile phones and the Internet, have become all but essential in building democracies. We saw for ourselves every night on the TV news how close cell phone videos came to bringing down the current government in Iran. We’ve also seen how countries like China censor the internet, because they fear its power.
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For some people, the New Year brings new concerns about the elderly folks in their lives. If that’s you, here’s something you should know: The internet strengthens the brains of even older people. Middle-aged and older adults with little Internet experience were able to trigger key centers in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning after just one week of surfing the web. Use of the internet could be one of the main reasons why IQ’s are rising. But while more older adults than ever are using cell phones and computers, a technology gap still exists that threatens to turn senior citizens into second-class citizens.
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