By Peter Cochrane, 21 August 2006 11:05
COMMENT
Written in my home office and despatched to silicon.com from a free domestic wi-fi connection in a forest glade just outside Chelmsford UK
Have you noticed the net slowing down these past couple of weeks? Have you noticed the amount of spam rising? Have you spotted the incidence of virus attacks, worms, Trojan Horses etc seems to be almost doubling? How come? I reckon it's all because school's out.
Thousands of youngsters are home for the summer and they ain't sat watching TV, they're surfing the net, downloading music and movies, emailing and playing online games. And worse, they are unwittingly increasing the opportunity for anything that spreads by viral propagation or undesired hosting. It happens every school vacation but I have never seen it so bad.
Seems to me we have the coalescing of many forces here. The availability and spread of broadband; the fall in the cost of IT equipment that now sees the majority of homes having at least one PC; the majority of kids now capable of driving a PC really well; and the sheer growth in content and interactive sites available. The scope of sites is vast - from music and movies and games through eBay, shopping, chatrooms, alternative reality sites, instant messaging, videoconferencing, VoIP and much more.
For sure, this summer ain't a flash in the pan - we haven't seen the last of this vacation surge. Unlike their parents these kids have time, a lot of time, as well as motivation, money and almost total freedom.
When I was a kid I escaped the parental eye by heading out over the empty fields to a fantasy world of camping, cowboys and Indians, pirates and warfare. Today's youngsters it seems head for the PC as their alternate to the real world. And year-on-year there are more of them worldwide, so traffic surges will most likely grow rapidly vacation on vacation.
Can we do anything about it? Almost certainly not! We are going to have to build a bigger net for starters, and then the ISPs, plus the rest of industry, will have to take a very serious look at the threat posed by those responsible for virus attacks and other malware. If we do nothing we could see another net meltdown this summer, or next Christmas, or whenever, it will happen.
Comments
There are 4 comments. Join the discussion
1. Richard Sheppard
That's the threat: Any opportunities?
How about nationwide, or even international competitions to encourage youngsters to create "content," with the attraction of recognition and prizes?
I'd hate youngsters to spend all their spare time peering at their PCs, but there's a great opportunity here.
Perhaps something blended from "Pop Idol," "Fame Academy," MySpace and YouTube; but judged on creative "content" rather than on stage performance?
Content would be posted to a web-site for anyone to comment; the best and most popular would be broadcast: Viewers would vote for their favourites.
It could do wonders for our creative industries.
2. Peter Cochrane
Richard = In my past life I equipped around 1000 youngsters in the Suffolk region, and took in around 100 during the summer vacation periods. I had some remarkable 14 year old html programmers etc. You are right, there is a huge sea of untapped talent going to waste. The big problem right now is finding it.... Peter
3. Rosa Blaus
Not all of us teenagers are evil virus-making, music-downloading, internet-hogging online gamers.
I set up Yellowikis with my dad and some of our best editors and tech people are teenagers. We are going to encourage them to make money from ther wiki-editing, video-making and tech skills.
Rosa Blaus (15)
4. Andrew Macaulay
Hi Rosa - I don't think Peter meant you to take that message from what he wrote. We all need to make a living somehow and malware writers that aren't funded from dubious sources must be people with lots of time on their hands. Couple that with my view that those most expert in a technology are those that grow up with it as a commonplace part of their life and I can believe that some students make a significant contribution to network disruptions. Just some, not all or even many but just enough to make a difference large enough to be problematic.
Good for you on the Wiki work: I really hope it all goes well for you!
Andy.