Gabriel, Alyssa Keith B.

I - CE 1
24 July y

Technological Solace:
How Information Revolution Conditions Peace and Security

The world is a tap away.

It exists on our pockets, or palms, and is accessed through a complex mechanism of codes
and binary systems, and connects us to the rest of the world through the global computer network
— the internet.
We live in an age where information can be transferred from a side of the world to
another within milliseconds, or even less (depending on the connection — 5G is a real thing!).
This comes with countless advantages that make our daily lives easier: from googling where the
nearest chain of your favorite fast food restaurant lies, researching publications that support your
own academic paper, looking up the latest news on the current hottest thing in Hollywood and
even in settling bank accounts and bills.
This new wave of information revolution is driving a rapid global change that creates an
environment for states and countries to rely on express communication to ensure peace and
security.
On August 6, 1945, the Unites States detonated ‘Little Boy’ — a nuclear weapon that
annihilated about 100,000 lives — on Hiroshima, Japan. Three days after the atomic bomb was
dropped on Hiroshima by the Enola Gay, Charles Sweeney was ordered to drop Fatman on
Kokura. He flew boxcar over the city for nearly an hour with the bomb bay doors open, but it
was cloudy. Sweeney couldn’t achieve visual information of the target and was forced to go to
the secondary target — Nagasaki, where 75,000 people died instead. Kokura was spared because
of the clouds.
Seventy-four years ago, people changed the coordinates of where they wanted to drop
bombs because of clouds alone. Now, with the use of Global Positioning System (GPS), each

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meter is measured so precisely that even in the event of a rainstorm, Fatman would have been
dropped on Kokura nonetheless.
In Hong Kong, an uproar is rising due to an opposition to the law that required fugitives
to be extradited to Taiwan or mainland China. This sparked a global interest, and in turn was
(and still is) a very big topic in current events, being shared countless times on social media
platforms. The information revolution had changed the way we viewed chaos and made the
pedestrians by the jeepney loading station and sixth grade students and illegal cigarette vendors
more aware of what is happening in other countries.
Crime is present in various forms in the Philippines and remains a serious issue throughout
the country. As of 2014, the country has the highest rate of murder cases among other Southeast
Asian countries. With the prolific use of social media among people with varying ages, the
spread of information and misinformation acts like wildfire. Rape victims are being rallied across
forums, unsolved murder cases are being cracked by netizens if not the police, and bystanders
are being informed on where to and not to go.
The contemporary world offers much solace to the common spectator. Safety and
knowledge often come in a package. And to be safe, more often than not, only requires a few
commands on your phone — be it to call a loved one during an ominous taxi trip, looking at
google maps to make sure the local tricycle driver is actually leading you to the right destination
or actually calling the police in unfortunate events. Information is analogous with security, and
with our current day — it doesn’t take much to be secure.

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