What Is the Future of Knowledge in the Internet Age?

What Is the Future of Knowledge in the Internet Age?

In the December issue of Scientific American, author David Weinbergerreports from the frontiers of knowledge. His story "The Machine That Would Predict the Future" explores the promise of theFuturICT project, an attempt to build a computer model of all the social, economic, ecological and scientific factors at play in the world. Weinberger is one of our most incisive thinkers about the digital age, a senior researcher at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the author of books such as Small Pieces Loosely Joined (Basic Books, 2002), Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder (Times Books, 2007), and the upcoming Too Big to Know (Basic Books). Technology editorMichael Moyer caught up with him at theForum d'Avignon (by phone, sadly) to talk about his upcoming book, his December article and the future of knowledge.

Our Internet is a paradise for consumers but a hell for citizens.

Our Internet is a paradise for consumers but a hell for citizens.

That Facebook's stance on pseudonyms may be entrenching autocracies doesn't seem to bother the company in the least. In fact, the Chinese edition of the “Facebook Revolution” bears all the markings of an anti-revolution: Facebook has been criticized for deactivating the account of the prominent Internet activist who goes by the pseudonym of Michael Anti. In Egypt, Facebook was precariously close to clipping the wings of the future revolutionaries when it suspended the Facebook page started by the Google executive Wael Ghonim, who, of course, was also using a pseudonym.

Salman Rushdie Runs Afoul of Web’s Real-Name Police

Salman Rushdie Runs Afoul of Web’s Real-Name Police

Mr. Rushdie’s predicament points to one of the trickiest notions about life in the digital age: Are you who you say you are online? Whose business is it — and why?