The Internet - a new Pandora's Box

One cannot take a very positive view of the future of the world, starting now, and the main reason is the development of electronic technology - the mobile phone and the world wide web, and all the developments in these areas which will continue to accelerate. And everyone everywhere wants to be connected - look how Cubans pressurise to join in, how mobile phones are washing across India......soon everyone will be on net and for practical purposes the global reach is already achieved
Very wonderful as an aid to our personal lives and a tremendous assistance to economic growth and civilised working conditions. But there are two vast and terrible consequences.

First.  Anyone anywhere can now be a terrorist. An individual can be part of a religious movement, or of a group of discontents, or indeed just a loner.

Just such individuals killed in Australia and in Canada, and the question was asked, how such violence could occur in such peaceful countries. The question was inappropriate. The violence resulted from contacts with the world wide web, not from the host countries, and the contacts can now spread into the most remote areas on earth.  And as for the Islamic or other groups, they are enabled to organise electronically in complex ways, ever more violent, and ever more difficult to track down in advance. We are in any case the children of the forest, and evolution has given us a desire to belong, to identify with a group, with a mission.

How fulfilling,  and how difficult to stop more and more deluded people around the world from learning bloody instructions.

Secondly. There are still many poor countries in the world which,  whether because of a low level of economic  activity or because of despotic or foolish regimes, offer no hope to those living there. No education, no provision for health,  no careers. This was true for centuries, but now they know. One young man, warned that he might drown in his attempt to get from North Africa to Italy, replied that it did not matter if he lost his life, as at home it was not worth living. There are  enormous numbers of these potential or indeed actual immigrants and they will continue to pursue a better life, even if those fleeing from direct violence are accommodated in one way or another, which is anyway in practice impossible in view of the numbers involved.

The world wide web has opened a Pandora's box of misery and violence and, as in the original box, only Hope remains.