No matter how far Hollywood fiction may be from reality, it serves as a mirror, reflecting society’s subconscious fears and expectations.

Today we use the internet in everyday life, and its importance is growing rapidly as it transforms from a mere communication media into an essential part of society’s spinning gears. Ten years ago if the internet shut down, it would result in confusion. Today it could cost lives, and in some part of their brain people feel the threat.

The problem is that the technology has developed so fast that humanity can’t keep up with it. Like Alice in the world behind the looking-glass, we have to keep running just to stay in the same place. Generally speaking, we are pretty immature in how we use the internet, oblivious to the real dangers waiting for us in cyberspace.

Vladimir Kremlev for RT (click to enlarge)

In fact, users are the weakest links in cyber security. From a person giving away his banking password to a phishing website to civil servants misplacing notebooks with confidential information – the signs of how careless we can be are everywhere. Like children in a playground, it is only when we fall down and hurt ourselves that we start to grow up and learn responsibility.

From the very beginning, the ‘internet playground’ had few rules and many people were ready to abuse the system. First, hackers wrote viruses out of pure hooliganism, unlike the profit-seeking criminals of today. Web forum users often hide behind aliases to offend people, knowing they will not be called to answer for their insults. People willingly download trojans to their computers by clicking on outwardly suspicious ads and use predictable passwords like “12345”.

The latest fad of computer-related ‘time-to-panic’ news is cyberwarfare. Sinister stories about hackers are everywhere, ranging from nerds wearing Chinese People’s Liberation Army uniforms planting viruses in America’s electricity grid to inconspicuous-looking people crashing Estonia’s government servers from underground rooms with portraits of Putin hanging on the walls. It has never been proved that a government has ordered a cyber attack against another country, but the implication is in the air.

It’s difficult to tell fact from fiction here. For one, a hacker attack is difficult to show on the screen, as any TV journalist or movie director will tell you. No shooting tanks, no missile-launching aircraft, just invisible bits and bytes moving through wires and IT whiz kids telling us how dangerous it is. Without a vivid picture, the public, spoiled by 24/7 news channels, turns to its imagination to find out exactly how dangerous it is.

Supply follows demand. People expect worse-case scenarios and journalists look for them. And budget-seeking IT security experts are ready to deliver. It’s not that there is no threat on the net, quite the contrary. But its public image is far from being accurate.

Perhaps once the generation born after the internet takes charge, the situation will change. For them, living in cyberworld will be as natural as breathing and they will know how not to get hurt there. It will be a dangerous future, like the present days is dangerous, but hardly an apocalyptic one.

Alexandre Antonov, RT