Yahoo!

The more a word remains the same, the more its meaning changes. In the beginning, yahoo' was the word for a beast in a human form. The ki...

The more a word remains the same, the more its meaning changes. In the beginning, yahoo8217; was the word for a beast in a human form. The kind that Gulliver of Jonathan Swift8217;s creation encountered in one of his curious travels. The definition might appear to fit many a creature one runs into during our daily travails, but the five-letter coinage was to acquire an entirely different connotation across the far shores of India.

A couple of centuries, and it regained currency and reverberated through the length and breadth of this land, indeed over the whole Bollywood-loving world, as a mating call. The self-same Shammi Kapoor, who yelled out the love-war-cry as he rolled down snowy slopes, was to visit and revisit the site of a new yahoo8217; as a compulsive net-surfer years later. The first of yahoos frightened people. The second seduced a Saira Banu on the screen. No less impactful has been the last, Net version. Now, however, comes the twist in the tale. It8217;s not exactly as if anyone is going to ask, quot;Yeah?Who?quot;, but the site is not quite the same it was before hackers struck at it.

quot;Do you Yahoo?quot; runs its recurring last line. quot;Don8217;t you Yahoo!quot; the cyberhoods, the byte-burglars seemed to be saying as they broke into the sanctum sanctorum of the site and put it beyond access for forty eight hours of unprecedented frustration for addicted, abjectly dependent American users. Seldom was more food offered for futurists8217; thought.

About the kind of calamities, for example, that await a more fully wired humanity. The Inferno wrought by a power failure in a city of skyscrapers may look like a small inconvenience compared to the havoc ruthless hackers can wreak upon a community that would have virtually8217; unlearnt the art of existing without electronic communication. A breakdown in the byte traffic, in such conditions, may bring down aeroplanes, stock exchange fortunes and, as cumulative result of several crashes, even elected governments without resort to the traditional and tested device of defections.

Apromising field of fascinating speculation that is waiting for its own Issac Asimovs, Frederick Forsythes, and Arthur Haileys. None of this will necessarily belong to the realm of fiction for long, considering that site invasions have become a reality considerably before satellite invasions. Hackers8217; are by now a self-acknowledged community, though it must be added, in fairness, that they distinguish themselves from crackers8217;. Hacking, they say, has helped to create the Internet by enabling free communication between computer systems, and is not the same as cracking of codes. What matters to the net-user more, however, is that, if hackers are here, crackers can8217;t be far behind.

To follow close on their heel will be the creamy layer of the crime world. The change in the offing is a challenge waiting to be accepted by the creators of India8217;s own yahoo. The makers of our masala films, searching for a substitute for the smuggler villain rendered obsolete by the economic reforms, may find their answer in theunderworld of the cybercity. Political extremism, too, may find in cracking an alternative to crude terror. And, the more the world changes, the more it may remain the same.