"A Journey on the Information Highway"

Nobody has any idea what 50 years of compounded friendly-ambitious-nerd switchboarding + modern media tools can look like. It's never been done. Montaigne and Emerson were better FANs than I'll ever be, but they didn't have Twitter. I see it as my duty to uphold their tradition.

Rather than a tool, the Internet might best be seen as a “living system,” Smith writes. It is the fulfillment of a centuries-old human aspiration toward interconnectivity—albeit a disappointing one.

But this is less of a systemic problem than in the past, because the web has massively eroded the power of gatekeepers to suppress and control speech. I was among the first to recognize this potential for individual freedom of speech, and helped pioneer individual online media, specifically blogging, 20 years ago.