May 31, 2009 (The Hindu Business Line) --
choice.
D. Murali
( www.hachettelivre.co.uk). The biggest single venue for the recruitment of Western youth into violent radical Islam is not the mosque but the desktop computer, he says, citing an expert on mil itant Islam.
“Just like those music file-sharing sites that are so good at dodging the authority of the music industry, the great advantage of the Internet for radical Islamists is that it bypasses the authority of the local imam and puts angry young militants into direct communication with their peers.”
How does technology work in the hands of conventional armed forces such as those of the US or Israel? When they tried to zap (OTCBB:ZAAP) themselves into the information age by hitching their troops too tightly to electronic information, the result was often to make those troops jumpy and confused, notes Harkin. “Even worse, paying too much attention to the demands of that information loop could surrender the leadership and objectives of military organisations, leaving them rudderless but in constant touch with one another.”
In contrast, when there was little organisation at all to speak of, surrendering one’s purpose to an electronic information loop and hoping for the best wasn’t a bad kind of military strategy, he finds. The weak electronic ties that join together radical young Muslims sitting bored at their desktops are enough to throw up a host of fruitful new connections and send extremist propaganda hurtling through Cyburbia, the author cautions. “The result has all the makings of a new kind of online terror network, a kind of jihadi Facebook.”
No wonder, therefore, that anti-terrorist officers from all the major security services ‘now spend much of their time with their ear to electronic chatter in order to map terror networks and predict when an attack might be in the offing.’
For starters, the preface describes Cyburbia as ‘the place we go when we spend too much time hooked up to other people via a continuous loop of electronic information… the state of limbo induced by living in thrall to this information loop.’
Suggested study.
Can we combat corruption in public services? Yes, with the help of technology, assures Subhash Bhatnagar in Unlocking E-Government Potential: Concepts, cases and practical insights ( www.sagepublications.com).
