The Internet as a Weapon

I attended the talk sponsored by Jepson “The Internet as a Weapon” by Yasha Levine. The overall premise of this talk was very interesting, and I was excited for it. Levine started with a video from the 1990’s that was used to show kids that their families needed to get access to the internet due to the endless possibilities. I thought that this was a great reminder as to how magical and amazing everyone thought the internet was about thirty years ago, and now we take it for granted so much. He then talked about how recently the government has been convinced that the internet has been hijacked and become weaponized. Some are even saying that what occurred with the 2016 elections should be considered an act of war.

One of the most important things that Levine said was the fact that our understanding and belief of the internet is based off of the false premise that the internet is some amazing wondrous thing that is only supposed to help us. He reminded the audience that the internet was created as a weapon for the government. Then he went into how the internet was made by a Pentagon program as a way to gain information about people to see who was more likely to be a resistant force. I thought that he was not the best at grasping the audience’s attention as he went through the history of the internet, and I felt that some of his points were lost because people were zoning out. But overall, I thought that this talk put a lot into perspective for me. Everyone recently has been up in arms about what the internet has become, but it has always been like this and we are just becoming more aware of it as the computers get smarter.