Image via WikipediaI have liked what Sarkozy has done for Libya. (The Arab Revolutions And My Rethinks On Britain And France) But the guy is on the wrong side of history on the Internet. For a guy who has sought to bring American style individualism and entrepreneurship to his country, he is missing out. Some of the rants by Sarkozy remind me of a story I read a long time ago that I just tried to look up on the Internet but was not able to find. There was this king. Some of his citizens came to him to report the river in the kingdom had flooded. Don't you worry, the king replied, I will command the river to stop flooding.
The Internet is a genie out of the bottle. That is not an argument to legalize drugs and prostitution. The opposite is true. The massive scale actions that need to be taken to tackle the biggest problems and challenges of our times can not even be imagined without the Internet. The massive data collection that we need to do to tackle global warming is about building an Internet of things. We have to add intelligence to our entire ecosystem so we take real time readings on all metrics to do with the global environment. Globalization minus the Internet would be chaos. But with the Internet globalization will lead to creations of unprecedented levels of wealth in all parts of the world. Cross cultural understandings are not possible without the Internet. Minus the Internet the governments of the world are too cocky, too inefficient, too inept, if not outright despotic and cruel. Minus the Internet a no name black man could not have ended up in the White House. The Internet is a tool with which to cure poverty, to end human trafficking, to end sex slavery. The Internet is the tool with which to bring democracy into every country.
