THE STORY OF THE INTERNET?

The advent of the internet onto the world's technological scene has brought about tremendously drastic changes to almost every way of doing things. Indeed, the internet has been far more successful in integrating our once distant worlds into one tiny unit christened the global village than all previous human efforts. In this village, geopolitical boundaries pose no barriers at all. Every location is simply a click away from another. One could hardly believe that this was the same world where there used to be an iron curtain supposedly separating two parts of the world purely on ideological grounds. That there was really a wall, the Berlin wall dividing the present capital of unified Germany into two separate cities with different systems and forms of governance until it's collapse in November 1989. This wall has stood for 28 years and cost the lives of 136 people who attempted to cross it. Yet some 5000 people were successful in crossing over into West Berlin. What could have been the use of this wall in today's internet world? I pinched myself hard into present reality to discover that even in today's internet world there still remain similar infamous walls behind which inhabitants have most of their freedoms curtailed. The remnants of these walls can be found in so-called socialist/communist and other pseudo-revolutionary countries. In these places the internet surely cannot be the friend of the establishment. Censorship is extensively used to limit citizens' access to anti-establishment material. Gestapo - styled monitoring of citizens activities on the internet makes it use to be no fun at all. All is not lost to our friends behind such walls. The existence of proxy servers makes it possible for the more internet savvy of our friends behind these walls to bypass censorship. An example can be made of the large Christian population in mainland China who worship underground due to Communist restrictions on religions. These mostly underground Xtian worshippers with the advent of the internet downloaded Bibles in Mandarin from proxy servers. It must be quickly added that these same proxy servers are sometimes also used for illicit activities to avoid detection for example illegal gaming sites on the world wide web. Interestingly the internet caches the whole world and its numerous activities for the user making these available via a click. The good, the bad and the unthinkable are all made available to users at a click. At this juncture I want to pause and pose my title as a question to you, what is the story of the internet? Could you help me continue this story? I would be most grateful. AKWASI OSSEI NKRUMAH An internet citizen