Have you seen this...

...have you heard about this?

Despite my severe lack of attention paid to the world the last few weeks, I managed to ‘grab’ up a rather interesting story that is all over the net right now.

So in case you didn’t hear, four major internet lines in the Persian Gulf were ‘accidentally’ cut at the end of January, crippling the internet for Egypt, Kuwait, Pakistan and part of India. The claim is that the lines were broken by anchors, even though the Egyptians, who monitor and restrict shipping lanes in the area under question, deny any traffic that might be the cause.

I bring this up mainly to discuss and analyze the fragile nature of the e-world we have created, but there is more fun to be had below.

We have started a new world recently. A world where friendships are no longer restricted by borders, languages or social stigmas, a world dependant on frail technologies and dwindling energy sources. In an effort to take the steps towards e-volution, we have embraced this world with welcoming and oft-encouraging arms. The youth of each generation since have taken steps unimagined by their predecessors. Yet, and of course suspiciously, four cables that comprise a major artery for this world were severed within a few days of each other. What future does this world really have?

Based on the technologies of the present, I would say none. However, and thankfully, we crafty apes have a way of thinking through our problems. While most of the solutions to the current problems have been developed and documented, we (the masses) will unfortunately not see them until the power elite find a way to make boatloads of money off of our bloody and sweaty backs. Until then we are at the whim of people like this, subject to our world’s random, and seemingly unrelated outages.

Imagine we live in a universe whose people just discovered a parallel universe along side it (and essentially our awareness of said world is the energy by which it is formed and exists). We have tapped into that world via tentative technological methods, and the two worlds have reveled in each others presence. Now, as that tech starts to fail, we are forced to watch as that world slowly degrades, while simultaneous proceeding along with its natural and rapid growth. I’m not suggesting the internet will not exist one day, unless of course some worldwide catastrophe befalls the Earth. However, we need to think about the survival of this world. How we are going to plan for the future of said world, and how we are going to guarantee the rapid e-volution of our corporeal forms to that of the superior sparking-ether? If you think I’m crazy, think of how many thoughts, memories, experiences, performances, and expressions you yourself have already converted into a virtually everlasting electric form. All we need to do now is take the step of transferring the web of electric synaptic sparks from our physical and fragile brains, to that of the growing web of electric … non-synaptic… sparks.

Okay, now for the fun. So the web is a flurry with conspiracy theory behind the reason for the outages. Of course this event was not an accident, which is undoubtedly a lie. Four major cables break in four different areas in one week. Ask any IT security person, or even anyone at all versed in IT and they will tell you that this type of event does not happen accidentally. So initially all the less informed internet conspiracists were saying this was an information blackout operation by the US Government to either cut down or complete cut out the internet chatter in the area so they could initiate a quite war with Iran. This type of thing makes other conspiracists look stupid. I mean come on, the government will invade Iran, but they will make the US people want it first, or at least think that it is a slightly better idea then not. Granted Dubbah is great at doing war crimes, but that would be political and potentially literal suicide.

So the more informed have a few different ideas regarding the breaks.

The first few breaks were accidents, in that someone was trying to jack into the hard lines to monitor communications and fucked up the job, and then thought breaking some other lines was a smart way of causing a distraction (was my sarcasm too subtle there). You see, Iran wasn’t affected by the breaks, so they would still be able to send e-Mails to every UN member telling them that the sneaky americans are shooting them up.

Another idea is that lines were cut on purpose, to divert the communications through lines that are already being spied on. You see the sophistication of the internet, as well as all technology, is only as good as the limited materials we’ve used to build the superstructures with. Before the internet was even a sci-fi fantasy, we as humans have been experimenting with cable (thanks Edison, you jackass). We can determine the distance along a cable if a break occurs, if someone taps in to said line, etc… So to tap a line routing that much information, which is only the thickness of and average human thumb, would shoot up flags all over monitoring boards. However, if you’ve already snuck in a tap via some other router, maybe your own, its very convenient to have the non monitored lines ‘break’, and then have all the info you want go through lines that you’re already watching. I like this one the best.

However the real question is this: Where is the USS Jimmy Carter? The USS Jimmy Carter is the most advanced spy submarine the US has ever commissioned. The last of the great seawolf class submarines, this sub was specifically designed to spy on communications via underwater cable tapping, as well a slew of alternative spying techniques. Its activation decommissioned the USS Parche, which was a modified spy sub (all spy subs were modified from older models, the USS J.C. was the first to be built with espionage in mind). The USS J.C. was scheduled for active duty last month, yet the online government resources and the mission statements were all pulled from the web. So oddly enough, less then a month after the sub supposedly goes active, no one know where it is, and all this under water espionage is going on. I’m not saying the sub is responsible for the events of the last few weeks….oh wait, yeah I am. Well I’m heavily suggesting it at the very least. I guess when it comes down to it; the events were either serendipitous, or coincidental, one having more emphasis on the related nature of things.

Anyway, I hope that this has been worth the read. We really need to get together as humans and take responsibility for our ancestors’ mistakes. I know it isn’t really that fun taking responsibility for things, but if we don’t, it will be too late for anyone else to. Without a plan for sustainable energy and production, the world of technology we’ve built will be nothing more then castle’s made of sand, which as we know, fall in the sea…eventually.

Next week: “Do Oil Barrens Make Good Academic Administrators” or “Sometime you feel like a nut…”