Internet doomsday, explained

Wed, 16 May 2012 11:45:00 +0000

The apocalyptic story line was once reserved for truly apocalyptic events. Nuclear war. The return of Christ. Environmental or economic collapse. But it’s 2012, and the apocalypse has become the basis for everything from Super Bowl commercials to summer romantic comedies -- and no media story is too small to have an apocalyptic moniker attached to it. (Remember Snowmageddon?) If you want to get the world’s attention, simply proclaim that the world will soon end -- or the Internet. Just read coverage of the so-called Internet Doomsday virus, which will supposedly strike and shut down the Web on July 9.

Here's how the story got started. Back in October, the FBI announced that it had broken up an international crime ring when it arrested six Estonians in what was then heralded as “the biggest cyber criminal takedown in history.” The Estonians had, over the course of four years, hijacked more than 4 million computers in 100 countries through the use of malware known as DNSChanger. By redirecting the infected browsers of unwitting users, DNSChanger was able to send high volumes of traffic to the criminal ring’s rogue websites and servers, collecting more than $14 million in fraudulent advertising revenue and exposing their victims to information theft in the process.

America’s endless apocalypse

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 19:00:00 +0000

Few of us can clearly make out the form of history until it is well behind us. That helps us understand why we still have not settled on a common name for the decade now receding behind us. How others will look back on this time is beyond our knowing or influence, of course, but future historians would do well to ascribe to our time a name that encapsulates not just the events of the past decade but the way in which we as Americans have come to view the world and our place within it. Such a name might be the Apocalyptic Decade or, perhaps, the Apocalyptic Era — for it is not over yet.

It was during the last decade, after all, that the belief in the end of the world leapt from the cultish into the mainstream of American society. Ours is an era bookended by the widespread belief in the impending collapse of society: at one end we had Y2K, the largest and most expensive mass preparation for a secular apocalypse in the history of the world; at the other end we have the growing expectation and belief that December 21, 2012 — the supposed end date of the ancient Mayan Long Count calendar — will herald either a radically transformative or utterly cataclysmic global event. Between these two bookends are pages upon pages of apocalyptic anxiety, a decade-plus-long collection that tells the tale of an America that has grown very afraid of the future.

Salon.com > Mel Gilles

Internet doomsday, explained

America’s endless apocalypse