A friend of mine asked in response to this entry:

What is the media trying to make everybody afraid of?

Originally I was going to respond as a comment, but as I kept typing, I realised that it might just make a halfway decent blog entry.

So here goes – my take on a mostly volatile topic:

Fear is a very powerful emotion. Which means that if you can get someone to feel fear, you have their attention. This is the same concept exploited in horror movies.

So by causing a feeling of fear, perceived or real, the media has our attention. And that’s their job. To get your attention. And mine. This is what brings them money. They’re in the business of attracting attention.

I don’t know what agenda or motive they might have (beyond $$’s), but I don’t think it matters. What does matter to me, is that I am tired of the continual attempts to evoke this emotion from us, regardless of the reason behind it.

Sure, there’s legitimate times when fear is warranted – real news stories, etc. But the concept of an actual “war on terror” is a joke, if you ask me. Most actions end up being knee-jerk reactions designed to placate the public, or to show that “we are in control” somehow.

Shrug. I’ll stop now and get off my soapbox. 🙂

This posting is mostly for my friends who may or many not be internet-savvy enough to know how to look past all the fear mongering and hyperbole that’s been put out there by media regarding the recent network cable breaks overseas.

I will try to summarize the information that was presented here, here, here and here – if you want more in-depth, please to go those links. 🙂

In a nutshell: Last week two undersea cables were cut in the Mediterranean north of Egypt. Whether this was an accident or not is still to be determined. The affected cables were SEA-ME-WE-4 and FLAG Europe-Asia.

The countries hardest affected by these cable cuts were Egypt, Pakistan, India and Kuwait.

Iran, contrary to common belief, was not even in the 10 top affected countries, despite having lost approx. 20% of it’s connectivity.

Don’t get me wrong, losing 20% of a countries internet connectivity is bad – real bad – but nothing compared to the 90+ percent for Egypt and Pakistan.

An interesting point of note, is that many of the countries have managed to recover some of their lost connectivity – but they’re far from being out of the woods. And even if in the next week or so more of the connectivity is re-established, it won’t be until cable repairs are completed that the internet for those affected, will be back at full speed. (Currently, some of Europe is getting across the Mediterranean via the US and Asia….)