I felt that I had to share this story, because I think fits in well with the focus of this Information Architecture class, as well as the Information Ecologies readings for this week.

My father is a computer tech, and one of his accounts is a school in Camden.  He was called in after the faculty members found that somehow the administrative password to log onto the school's system had been changed.  The principal of the school explained to my dad that a 15-year-old student had hacked into the system and changed the password "just for fun".  How did he learn to do it?  "Well," said the principal, "he found a video on YouTube that gives a step-by-step walkthrough of how to hack into computers and make changes through the command prompt/DOS.”

Ironically, the only way my dad could fix the situation was to find that same video on YouTube, hack back through the system, and reset the password.

It seems to me that for every advance in technology we achieve, there are those who are ready and willing to exploit it and use it to start trouble and cause problems.  We can now shop online, but must fear our credit card numbers being stolen.  We have portable GPS systems, but must acknowledge that our exact location as well as a variety of other facts (such as maximum speed, average speed, miles per gallon of gas, and even where/how long we stopped the car) can all be accessed and recorded via satellite tracking.  And we have things like YouTube that provide entertainment and networking capabilities, but also provide an outlet for those seeking to use technology as a weapon.

To say it can be stopped isn’t realistic.  I asked my dad why the school didn’t manually block access to certain websites.  “They did that already,” he responded.  “The kids found a way to bypass it and just come in through the back door.”

Information Ecologies began with a great section about using technology with heart.  As much fun and as convenient as these advances are, we must realize that it also comes with a fair amount of problems as well, because not everyone in the world is using their heart every time they log onto their computer.