Social Networking and Rogue Individuals

Bill Joy once posited that new technology puts incredible destructive power into the hands of rogue individuals to do irreversible harm to the human race, and the planet ecosystem. In his Wired article, he named the three technologies that tranformed the nature and reach of a single individual: genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics.See complete article here.

In addition to these technical enhancements to a single individual, there is also the danger of social networking groups that allow rogue individuals to gather together, coopertate together, and learn together the destructive methods used by terrorists, assassins, etc.

An example is the meeting of the two young men who met online and planned the terror during the US election. Individually, each person may not be any more dangerous than the typical racist gun-crazy nut. But together, egging each other on, it is the chemistry between them that ignited the fuse to greater terror. The many social networking sites operating to day are gathering critical mass for the events that will surely wreck havoc unless they are anticipated and checked before execution. The need for cyber-intelligence is more urgent and critical than ever before.