barns.blog

Twenty years ago today, a young Cornell University student named Robert Tappan Morris let loose the first widespread Worm on the Internet. In 1988, the Internet was considered a safe computing space and this event took down some 10 % of the 60,000 odd computers connected to it. It is reported to have been the event which lead to Computer Security being a big thing. Today Morris is an Associate Professor at MIT.

So, Happy 20th Birthday Morris Worm, and in a way, Happy 20th Birthday Computer Security. Read more at Network World.

One of my colleagues blogged about the use of Social Media for Social Change as discussed by Sarah Perez in her discussion of the Twitter “Twit-out” and her concern at why Internet users are concentrating their efforts to such a minor world event and not concentrating their efforts on the wide variety of human plights round the world.

I cannot agree more on the jist of her post, and considering Mathe’s research into the use of technology to assist in the plight of some of the worlds problems. However, let us not get so involved in using the social media to further causes that we forget to do our bit elsewhere. The comments by Sebastian on Sarah’s post highlight an alternate view, even though I feel that it is misguided.

Let us be aware of what we can do, both in cyberspace and IRL (in real life).