Soapbox:

A little e-sense, please

By Mahmoud Khalil

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The futurist writer Alvin Toffler told us it was going to be this way. The 20th century, he wrote, would experience a shift of power, from those who wield guns and money to those who control the information we need to run our lives. The recent Internet breakdown only adds credence to his predictions.

The Internet is the nerve system of the modern world, and whenever its arteries get clogged we suffer. Look at the losses in the exchange markets and in companies dealing in e-trade. The government had to stop discussing the second licence for telephone terrestrial lines when the Internet went down. The size of the damage caused by the recent failure is hard to determine, but we all know how it feels now. Any interruption of information hits us where it hurts.

The average Egyptian has just had a taste of what globalisation is all about. We're more connected with the world than ever before. We send e-mails to people living across oceans, we chat with others in cyberspace, and we do business online. Now average citizens are asking if the recent damage to fibre optic cables was accidental or not, but the answer may take some time to emerge.

Sabotage cannot be ruled out, now or in the future. Someone, a country or an individual, an organisation or a group, may find advantage in committing such acts. Now that information is all we have, the temptation to mess with it is only too clear.

How did the Egyptian government handle this crisis? In its usual manner, I am afraid. Failing, as usual, to think ahead, the government neglected alternative plans. It should have taken precautions against such eventualities, but it didn't bother. It should have had precise plans on how to switch communications to alternative channels, but it didn't. Predicting a crisis is not something our government is good at. But it knows how to panic whenever a crisis happens. And it knows how to take random action and make things worse.

Our government prides itself in being an e- government. How about a little e-sense?

This week's Soapbox speaker is a professor of mass communications at Cairo University.