This is a good time to start a blog. Everything is happening at once. On the one hand , Google, Egypt and the Looney Fringe of Anonymous are making it harder for certain individuals and groups to make gainful use of the web. On the other, Facebook, Facebook and Facebook is/are veritably hosing private information from every rivet hole and clammy corporate orifice. With the advent of our Robot Overlords still no more than a distant possibility, it seems that radical action of some kind will be required to resolve our collective issues (as a species) with pervasive information sharing services.
To say "be required to" is perhaps redundant however - radical action is inevitable. It seems to be hard-wired into the web. Six point five billion people all talking at once will make for a very loud and incoherent conversation, but this bubbling stew of fervid opinion is nothing if not decisive. The hive drops the hammer at machine speed, which gives the appearance of all important net-dwelling policy decisions sorta-kinda making themselves. Whatever is going to happen with regard to regulation of web-based communication will happen too fast for anyone to see it coming. We have, through the very structure of the web, bet the proverbial farm on the dubious clarity of groupthink. Let's hope that baby gets a new pair of shoes... or failing that, at least a reliable connection to the Nigerian banking system. I hear there is money in them thar hills.
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