Editorial: You’ve got mail - and spam

Monday, Feb. 6, 2006 | 12:31 p.m.

Love e-mail and e-Bay, but still hate the Internet? Chances are, you aren't alone. The system that gives us online shopping, instant information and the ability to download our favorite songs and videos also is plagued by hackers, viruses and thieves.

According to a recent Knight Ridder Newspapers story, the Internet's 60 million Web sites and many times more e-mail users are operating within a risky environment where hackers with enough patience and skill could obtain everything from personal identities and financial information to classified government data. Today's Internet is a crazy quilt of programs, codes and security patches. "It's like there's a lot of duct tape holding it together," one computer expert told Knight Ridder. And computer security experts and federal officials fear a breakdown is imminent.

So in various groups and configurations, some of the people who built the original Internet are joining forces with new computer gurus to begin designing a new network that will either replace or supplement the existing one.

The National Science Foundation has committed $300 million to such research. And Internet2, a consortium of more than 200 representatives from U.S. businesses, government agencies and universities - including both University of Nevada campuses - is working to design and launch a new network.

Experts say this new information superhighway could even end up being two roads: one for casual users and another, more secure, thoroughfare for important personal and business data.

Securing it from scammers and computer worms could take away some of the anonymity and ease with which people sound off or add Web pages. But it also could create a host of options that none of us have dreamed of yet. Either way, it is exciting to imagine that the newest, bravest frontier may very well exist in that machine that sits atop our desks.