"You might be able to lift the limitations of conforming to any centralised representational form of government, originally invented because there was no way for everybody's voice to be heard.

You might be able to give everybody unhindered, untested access to knowledge, because a computer would do the day to day work for which we once qualified the select few, in an educational system originally designed for a world where only the few could be taught.

You might end the regimentation of people living and working in vast, unmanageable cities, uniting them instead in an electronic community where the Himalayas and Manhattan are only split seconds apart

You might, with that and much more, break the mold that has held us back since the beginning.

In a future world that we would describe as balanced anarchy and they will describe as an open society, tolerant of every view; aware that there is no single, privileged way of doing things; above all, able to do away with the greatest tragedy of our era: The centuries old waste of human talent that we couldn't or wouldn't use.

Utopia? Why?

If, as I've said all along, the universe is, at any time, what you say it is, then say ... ".

James Burke
Part 10: Changing Knowledge, Changing Reality
The Day the Universe Changed
1985

"As the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed, the Internet deserves the highest protection from governmental intrusion". [...]
"It is no exaggeration to conclude that the Internet has achieved, and continues to achieve, the most participatory marketplace of mass speech that this country -- and indeed the world -- has yet seen. The plaintiffs in these actions correctly describe the 'democratizing' effects of Internet communication". [...]
"True it is that many find some of the speech on the Internet to be offensive, and amid the din of cyberspace many hear discordant voices that they regard as indecent. The absence of governmental regulation of Internet content has unquestionably produced a kind of chaos, but as one of plaintiffs' experts put it with such resonance at the hearing: What achieved success was the very chaos that the Internet is. The strength of the Internet is that chaos".

Judge Stewart Dalzell
United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
Decision in:
American Civil Liberties Union vs Janet Reno, Attorney General of the United States, No. 96-963.
American Library Association vs Janet Reno, Attorney General of the United States, No. 96-1458.
June 1996

kremvax

The Cluetrain Manifesto