Valerie Song

A world with no Facebook? A world with no Youtube? A world… with no internet?

We already know about censorship in China and North Korea. According to most recent updates, the Egyptian government apparently has cut off all internet in response to the public protesting. (Try it out here: http://www.sis.gov.eg/) How did they do it? In essence, by forcing the nation’s service providers.

It started with Twitter, then Facebook, and eventually the entire internet. They even blocked all text messaging services.

Protests are increasingly getting violent; a curfew was disobeyed, leading to reported deaths (unconfirmed). Molotov’s were thrown, and teargas thrown back. The world is tense in anticipation of Egypt’s new government. Live updates here.

Our lives today are so much dependent on the convenience of the internet – we wake up, check our e-mails, read some news feeds, go to work/school, type up some more documents, waste time on Youtube, update our Facebook status, and repeat. All joking aside, can you even imagine a powerful nation such as the United States cutting off all their internet?

“There’s no way that will happen.” I can already hear the mocking voices of cynics. Such a metaphorical button may, in fact, be in existence. There has been abill proposed in the US, the “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act,” last year that has been brought back again this year.

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