1. Introduction
The latest poem collection by Cathy Park Hong, Engine Empire, explores the possible development of a fictional world. It starts with the old West, goes through an industrial boomtown, and concludes with a dystopia in which technology encompasses and flows through all areas of life. Virtual reality plays a great role in the poems in the last section, "The World Cloud". The poems illustrate the negative side of our rapid development of technology, resulting in dangers and risks for both computer systems and human lives. On the surface, Cathy Park Hong uses a futuristic device, the snow, to depict its negative influence it has on humans. Her poems are full of threats for the way humans think and perceive the world around them. Some of the dangers also apply to the technological inventions there are in our present time, especially the Internet. The Internet helps people to stay in contact with each other, and to exchange information quickly. However it also separates people from each other, and takes away the competence of using their own intelligence. This paper will identify the negative side-effects of the technological progress and illustrate how these exist in our present-day technologies. It will focus more on how people use technology, and especially the Internet, for cyber-crimes, less on the effects the Internet
Because we rely on a working computer and often need a stable Internet connection for our work, these risks do not threaten only the computers but also, implicitly, the humans using these computers. People have to protect themselves in the real world, that is, everyone has to watch out for possible threats which can occur in reality, e.g. one can be a victim in a robbery, or people risk their lives fighting in times of war, just to name some real world dangers. Similarly, everyone has to protect him-/ herself in times of malware, phishing, or any other computer