I think that the next two generations of Americans will be grappling with the very real specter of finding themselves living in a new and bizarre kind of digital totalitarian state - one that looks and feels democratic on the surface, but has a fierce undercurrent of fear and technologically enforced fascism any time you step out of line. I really hope this isn't the case, but it looks really bad right now, doesn't it?

I don't think that I'm embracing any kind of leadership for transparency or trans advocacy.

The press and free speech landscape has totally changed. There is far less news reporting today. Instead, we have this endless stream of - largely meaningless and speculative - analysis by sideline commentators and self-proclaimed "experts."

Disturbingly, the First Amendment, along with the Fourth Amendment - protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures, and requiring warrants - have been the major casualties of the shift in government policy in the last two decades. Unfortunately, I think that the biggest consequences of this tragedy won't be clear until it is far, far too late.

I think the increased ubiquity of the internet and networked computing in general allowed me to have some tether no matter where I was geographically. I could log in to a computer from anywhere in the world and access the same information and the same people. It allowed me to transcend the physical differences.

I think the embryonic digital world had the same affect on me as the openness of the old American frontier.

While being tossed around the world from place to place as a teenager, I wasn't really tethered to any place or anyone.