Most of humanity has undergone a process of education which depends for its effectiveness on the perceived power of some ‘authority’ to exert an unquestioned controlling influence over the general direction of life. A source of influence that depends for its continuing effectiveness on never being subjected to rational scrutiny, or genuine examination of any kind. Such is the beguiling power of full-on indoctrination.

After 2004, I believed the story that the protesters in Ukraine and elsewhere were mobilized through text messaging and blogs.

We were supposed to be saving the world by helping to promote democracy, but it seemed clear to me that many people, even in countries like Belarus or Moldova, or in the Caucasus, who could have been working on interesting projects with new media on their own, would eventually be spoiled by us.

On the one hand, we can foresee these companies extending their reach ever further into everyday life, to a point where it would become difficult to even articulate why you would want a different model, since our use of these technologies and the politics embedded in them also permits or restricts our ways of thinking about how to live.