One of the unique phenomenas that our culture is experiencing compared to past generations is the rapid development of technology. With the advent of computers and vastly improved communication networks, projects that would have taken centuries in the past take only years or months. Take construction for example. If you ever find yourself walking through a Catholic cathedral in Europe, take a good look at the building’s construction. Entire lifetimes of work just went into building half of one column. For me at least, I’ve always found that this perspective helps me appreciate a church on a whole new level as you’re looking at generations of work dedicated to one purpose. However in today’s world, a project that’s similar in scope might take only a year or two to complete. The rapid development of technology has allowed to humanity to advance at a rate never before seen, and this rate of development is only increasing every day. However one of the interesting cultural byproducts of this phenomena are older generations who have completely missed new technological trends, and it is these same understandebly confused individuals who generally hold places of power in our government and business.

It was this Ars Technica article that describes the striking down of bill in Maryland that would criminalize “leeching” WiFi that really caught my eye this time. The bill was first drafted by Maryland State Delegate LeRoy E. Myers, Jr. after he caught a neighbor using his unprotected WiFi connection. Of course, LeRoy immediately thought of the possibility of someone using his WiFi connection to perform some terrorist act or force his bandwidth of some predetermined ISP limit. So instead of just simply securing his network, LeRoy chose to demonstrate his complete misunderstanding of technology and decided to go to the state government and introduce legislation to criminalize such an act. However he’s not alone in his concern, there have been several other incidents of people receiving fines and jail time for doing similar acts, and it is this growing trend of a misunderstanding that disturbs me. Instead of securing their networks which takes approximately 30 seconds, people are heading to the courts to punish those to have willfully violated their property.

WiFi is one thing, but it is only one example in a large sea of confusion. Take Senator Ted Steven’s famously awful analogy of comparing the internet to a “series of tubes“. He proposed that like plumbing, if internet connections get clogged with useless traffic or garbage, the whole system is brought to a crawl. And while his analogy might have actually been fairly apt, his chosen vehicle for this analogy demonstrates a level of comprehension that is hopelessly locked into the past.

Now it’s important for me to disclose at this juncture that I don’t feel that technology is the solution to all problems. I’m certain that if we as a society rely solely on new technologies before we completely understand them ourselves to solve all our problems, we might create larger problems than we had in the first place. However that being said, technology in general can only help propel us into the future, and I’m greatly concerned that the limits of human ingenuity might very well lie in our houses of government and not our own minds.