Vicious terrorist attacks in Egypt, Iraq, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and elsewhere have dramatized the magnitude of the threat of terrorism.

In 2004, heavy flooding caused by hurricanes in two distinct areas of the country (Fonds Verrettes Mapou Gonaïves) dramatized the consequences of the impoverishment of soil and the increased vulnerability of the country to natural disasters.

In the middle of the twentieth century, people feared that computers and new means of communications would create the kind of central governmental control dramatized in George Orwell s 1984. And, indeed, authoritarian governments in China, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere have used the new technologies to try to control information.