Hacktivism: Pushing the Boundaries of Internet Expression
You return to your computer after a long day’s work, ready to check the heaven knows how many Facebook notifications you managed to garner after a week of Internet abstinence. You quickly type in your password – incorrect. Confused, you try again, no go. Bewildered, you check for caps lock and then give it another shot. Must have changed it without realizing, you think, as you go ahead and file a password recovery request. You head to your e-mail and sign in there, but again your try fails. As attempt after attempt is rejected, you begin to panic as you think of the possibility of someone else having access to your Facebook, reading through your e-mails, and having full access to all the information you put online. As horrific as the above scenario might sound, it’s only one of...
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Bootleg Your Copy of SOPA, Today!
Imagine having been assigned an insanely obscure paper in a history course: Research the whereabouts of ex-President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and his relationship to sociologist Edwin Chadwick; trace their family lineages. How do they relate to the current economy in America? Afterwards, explain whether topographical changes may affect the psychological health of current citizens affected by their research.” Determined to acquire the complex information required to fulfill such a task, you turn on your computer and open your browser. Sitting comfortably in your chair, you type in the addresses and press enter, with the expectation of gaining access to hundreds of gigabytes of information. But hold on…they’re black. The webpage yields nothing but a solid black background and the acronym SOPA. Can you imagine a world without Wikipedia or Google, where people actually have to use books? The...
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Assembling the Future: The Rise of Smart Manufacturing
A landmark ruling by the World Trade Organization recently has recently found China to be guilty of protectionism. China’s export quotas on nine raw materials, such as zinc and bauxite, gave its domestic manufacturers an unfair advantage. China has frequently been criticized for its currency control policies as well as its failure to honor its 2001 pledge to stop export controls,[1] but the new WTO ruling is far more significant than it may appear on the surface. China, long considered to be the dominant force in world manufacturing, has a lot to worry about from this ruling for two primary reasons. First, China’s main advantage—price—is highly contingent upon cheap materials. Factor in rising Chinese wages,[2] and the advantage of moving manufacturing offshore shrinks rapidly. The second is that the minerals covered under the ruling are necessary for many high-tech...
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Cyberwarfare: Pushing the Boundaries of Human Conflict
23 years ago, the Berlin Wall came crumbling down and a curtain was drawn upon the end of an era. 23 years ago, the first commercial Internet Service Providers (ISPs) were founded and the Internet was poised to explode. But that was then. Now, we live in an age where the victors of the Cold War no longer hold a position of hegemony over the rest of the world. We live in an age where the next great fields of technology are “smart.” Now, it is not so much a question of what the Internet is but rather “in how many ways can I access it?” The Internet has become one of, if not the most pervasive medium in the world today. It hosts 97% of all telecommunications information – that’s 97 times higher than the rate just two...
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Petro-patronage: How the Middle East is Buying Its Way to the Top
Class has just ended at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Several students stroll out of their lecture hall, chatting in Arabic. They walk down a block of gleaming, white, futuristic buildings and meet up with friends who go to Cornell, University College, and HEC. The students discuss their classes and the recent Champions League matches while having a picnic lunch under a grove of palm trees. This could be happening right now at Education City in Doha, Qatar, where the oil-funded Qatar Foundation has assembled a formidable collection of branches of top Western universities. Over the past few years, the small states of the Persian Gulf, in particular Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have been using their money to buy their way onto the world stage. Unlike previous rising powers who sought military or economic muscle, these...
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