Nobody yet knows how fast information will travel in the twenty-first century. Three months ago the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation established a new standard for data transfer by sending a message at a rate of 14 trillion bits per second. In less technical language, that is the equivalent of transmitting 140 complete DVDs every second, or a full year’s worth of viewing in about thirty seconds. In an hour you could send or receive enough footage for a century of nonstop cinema. Or, if you preferred to read, you could acquire the entire archives of the New York Times and the New Yorker magazine-in less time than it takes to yawn. This staggering amount of information was channelled through a single 160 km-long optical fiber. Future networks are likely to carry millions of these magical strands, creating data streams of unimaginable speed. These will almost certainly transform our rudimentary uses of digital communication. However, even at our current snail-spaced speeds, there are cautionary tales as to what might go wrong in this brave new world.
In State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, James Risen claims that in 2004 an officer at CIA headquarters inadvertently sent the wrong high speed encrypted transmission to an Iranian agent, a message which contained “data [that] could be used to identify virtually every spy the CIA had inside Iran.” The error was compounded by the fact that the recipient turned out to be a double agent. Shortly afterwards, the agency’s entire network of spies went silent-presumably because they had been captured. After Risen’s book’s was published, the CIA acknowledged the mistake but denied that any spies had been compromised. Their Director of Public Affairs even protested-in what sounded like a tacit confirmation-that, “Setting aside whether what [Risen] wrote is accurate or inaccurate, [his disclosure] demonstrates an unfathomable and sad disregard for U.S. national security and those who take life-threatening risks to ensure it.” Whatever the details in this particular case, the catastrophe that could result from human error in a world of high speed data is clear enough. If the CIA really has lost its spies in Iran, that means that in its current game of diplomatic chess with President Ahmadinejad the US is playing blindfolded. Faulty intelligence, belligerent posturing, ill-advised bluffing, it all sounds horribly familiar.
A different kind of problem can occur when technology is used ineptly. When the United Nations headquarters in Iraq was destroyed by a thousand-pound bomb, the explosion was felt five miles away. Curious Iraqis rushed up to their rooftops and, seeing a large column of smoke in the distance, turned on their televisons to find out what had happened. In Imperial Life in the Emerald City, his damning account of life inside the Green Zone, Washington Post correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran recounts how his friend Saad turned on the local channel, al-Iraqiaya, hoping for an update. But all he could find was an Egyptian cooking show. So, like thousands of other Iraqis, he switched to al-Jazeera. There he found a live report of the bombing. During the next few hours, objective reporting gave way to commentary by “self-proclaimed analysts [who] branded the American occupation as illegal and all but praised the insurgents responsible for the attack.” Bewildered, Saad asked Chandrasekaran, ‘Do the Americans want us all to become jihadists? … Why don’t they try to compete with this filth?” On this occasion the answer was sadly predictable: incompetence. The contractor in charge of the al-Iraqiaya lacked postwar media development experience and had squandered money on fancy new vehicles and unnecessary equipment. So their inability to deliver timely, accurate information about what was happening in the capital city lost the Americans valuable credibility at a crucial stage in the war.
For another example of what can go wrong in a highly-connected world, consider the case of Robert Redeker, a philosophy teacher who wrote a controversial op-ed piece for the French newspaper Le Figaro last September. During a discussion of the pope’s remarks about Islam, Redeker called the prophet Mohammed “a master of hatred” and claimed that Islam “in its own sacred text, as well as in its everyday rites, exalts violence and hatred.” By themselves these were not new criticisms, nor were unusually severe, at least not by the standards that have long prevailed among French intellectuals. Nevertheless, after being posted online (and translated into Arabic) the article earned condemnation on al-Jazeera. This attention caused an Islamist website to announce a death sentence on Redeker, and to post his address and a photograph of his home to make the task easier. Since then Redeker and his family have fled their home and lived under the protection of the French police.
In each of these examples, high speed communication allows ordinary blunders, and abuses, to occur sooner, more impersonally, and to have a much wider impact than similar errors in the past. Nowadays, an online rumour can shift billions of dollars on the stock exchanges, in minutes; an unpopular opinion or a dramatic incident can provoke widespread anger in one continent half an hour after it has occurred in another-the killings of US contractors in Fallujah, or the attacks in Beslan, Madrid and London are obvious recent examples.
The most memorable instance of this, of course, took place on September 11, when the crash of the second plane that attacked the World Trade Center was broadcast on live television.
We are getting used to receiving more information than we can reasonably handle, at speeds that are better suited to machines. If, as Marshall McLuhan famously argued, the medium is the message, our new technology is urging us to react to events before we have any hope of understanding them. Where this will lead is anyone’s guess, but it can do no harm to push against the trend a little. Fortunately, the best antidotes to this headlong dash into the future are easily obtained, we call them books and newspapers.
