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Journalism of Courage
Words of endearment will never be the same again. Thanks to a creative, probably Filipino mind, those three monosyllabic words have been tainted forever, and declaring affection will now require some challenging lexical exertions. At least if e-mail is your sole media for communication, I-love-yous are definitely out. After the Love Bug disrupted online communication across the world mid-week with an innocuous-looking computer worm, we must ask of ourselves not just what capacity for self-destruction has been woven into our wired world, but also what it says of our emotional health.
It all begins with the arrival into the mailbox of an e-mail declaring quot;Iloveyouquot; and bearing an attachment; once opened, it quickly replicates itself and despatches its clones to e-mail IDs listed in the user8217;s address book and attempts to start deleting files from the hard disk. And, it is even being hypothesised that opening that amorous e-mail could help an Internet service provider in the Philippines steal the user8217;s password. Well! If the Melissa virus that led to large-scale computer shutdowns last year seemed ominous, this, as an expert put it, is quot;Melissa on steroidsquot;.
Think, then, about the Netizens who did not receive the message. Every wildfire virus has an interesting fallout. As users scan nervously their inbox for signs of the fatal message, most admit to a despondency if they find themselves out of the loop. What remote outposts of the cyber world do they inhabit that a self-replicating computer worm eludes them, what does it say about their social standing that the proverbial six degrees of separation do not embrace them? Are they mentioned in nobody8217;s address book? Moaned a Salon columnist last year: quot;In his Hitchhiker8217;s Guide to the Galaxy series, Douglas Adams described the most dangerous invention in history: one that shows the user precisely how insignificant he is in the universe. We now have that invention.quot; And it doesn8217;t help any when a Pentagon spokesperson, of all people, gleefully waves his 40 quot;Iloveyouquot; e-mails and sighs, quot;I8217;ve never had so much attention.quot;
The more anchored point to the more technical issues, to the fact that almost every computer virus exploits gaps in the Microsoft Outlook security programme, that in any other industry Bill Gates8217;s products would carry a quot;hazardous for healthquot; warning. But for a majority of online folk these viruses are a cause for intense introspection. At a time when two people living just a shout away prefer to acknowledge their affection for each other with a forwarded joke, the fact that they could be serving as vectors of infection is intensely disturbing. They should ponder over the suspicion that a new virus is on the loose carrying the words quot;Fwd: jokequot;.
