Unthinkable: How the Internet could become a tool of corporate and government power, based on updates now in the works
Picture, if you will, an information infrastructure that encourages censorship, surveillance and suppression of the creative impulse. Where anonymity is outlawed and every penny spent is accounted for. Where the powers that be can smother subversive (or economically competitive) ideas in the cradle, and no one can publish even a laundry list without the imprimatur of Big Brother. Some prognosticators are saying that such a construct is nearly inevitable. And this infrastructure is none other than the former paradise of rebels and free-speechers: the Internet.
To those exposed to the Panglossian euphoria of Net enthusiasts during the 1990s, this vision seems unbelievable. After all, wasn�t the Internet supposed to be the defining example of empowering technology? Freedom was allegedly built into the very bones of the Internet, designed to withstand nuclear blasts and dictatorial attempts at control. While this cyberslack has its downside�porn, credit-card fraud and insincere bids on eBay�it was considered a small price to pay for free speech and friction-free business models. The freedom genie was out, and no one could put it back into the bottle.
Source: http://msnbc.msn.com/Default.aspx?id=3606168&p1=0
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