The New Digital Age

Who will be more powerful in the future, the citizen or the state? Will technology make terrorism easier or harder to carry out? What is the relationship between privacy and security, and how much will we have to give up to be part of the new digital age? How will war, diplomacy and revolution change when everyone is connected, and how can we tip the balance in a beneficial way? When broken societies are rebuilt, what will they be able to do with technology?

We should all be concerned about the future because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there.

—CHARLES F. KETTERING,

American inventor and businessman

If some member countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), an association of former Soviet states, became fed up with Moscow’s insistence on standardizing the Russian language across the region, they could join together to censor all Russian-language content from their national Internets and thus limit their citizens’ exposure to Russia altogether

The next stage in the process for many states will be collective editing, states forming communities of interest to edit the web together, based on shared values or geopolitics. Collective action—be it in the physical or virtual world—will be a logical move for many states that find they lack the resources, the reach or the capability to influence vast territories.

hostile if enough people find and believe information online that contradicts his authority. Young people in Yemen might confront their tribal elders over the traditional practice of child brides if they determine that the broad consensus of online voices is against it, and thus it reflects poorly upon them