Fear

Fear

Introduction

This scenario paints a bleak and negative picture of what is to come, in some respects, predicting a return to the Dark Ages.

Social

Society rapidly becomes more and more like a jungle as drug abuse and related crime escalates, the latter being aggravated by the sharp increase in the number of fire-arms in circulation. As national borders disappear, smaller geographical areas throughout the globe become no-go zones, ruled and policed by terrorist groups. Petrified of venturing outside on their houses, people work almost entirely from home – people that do summon up the courage to travel to the office avoid face to face communication through the current trend of communicating exclusively via e-mail. The level of crime increases in other ways: the security of data transmitted via the Internet becomes less and less secure, with hackers inventing more and more ingenious ways of swiping personal information from unwitting Internet users. Pop-up ads are designed to download programs that keep track any time a PC user clicks to the log-in page of 50 financial institutions worldwide. The program captures log-in information and sends it to another Web site, before the bank can encrypt the data. People no longer feel that their personal data is safe, with the result that use of the Internet becomes less popular. The threat of increasingly sophisticated online fraud becomes a reality faced by all Internet users across the world.

Technological

Technological advancements present something of a paradox: on one hand the advanced technology that is available increases the potential means of communication between people throughout the globe 24/7 but on the other, as people no longer dare to venture outside of their houses, the technology actually allowing the human race to become far less of a social species, enabling people to live within themselves in a sort of quasi-virtual existence - people can interact with others, converse, shop, watch films, listen to music all via the Internet without ever having to venture outside of their houses. Even the fundamental bodily need for sexual intercourse can to a greater extent be simulated and satisfied through sophisticated virtual internet programs substantially in the genre depicted in the Arnold Schwarzenneger film, Total Recall.

Political

Terrorist sabotage attacks and man-made viruses on the Internet become increasingly frequent resulting in an increased demand for regulation. More and more control over the content of, and access to, the Internet is demanded by governments as Big Brother mentality becomes more prevalent. Stringent regulation is introduced, driven primarily by US paranoia as numbers of detainees held in the Guantanamo Bay prisons awaiting trial for alleged terrorist offences rockets.