Making loans accessible to millions of the previously unbankable customers is a noble goal. Getting them hooked to such loans isn't.

Creative experimentation propels our culture forward. That our stories of innovation tend to glorify the breakthroughs and edit out all the experimental mistakes doesn't mean that mistakes play a trivial role. As any artist or scientist knows, without some protected, even sacred space for mistakes, innovation would cease.

The implications are clear: Facebook wants to build an Internet where watching films, listening to music, reading books and even browsing is done not just openly but socially and collaboratively.

The director of the FBI has been visiting Silicon Valley companies asking them to build back doors so that it can spy on what is being said online. The Department of Commerce is going after piracy. At home, the American government wants anything but Internet freedom.

The bigger the network, the harder it is to leave. Many users find it too daunting to start afresh on a new site, so they quietly consent to Facebook's privacy bullying.

Simply getting a country's population online is not going to trigger a revolution in critical thinking.

'Solutionism' for me is, above all, an unthinking pursuit of perfection - by means of technology - without coming to grips with the fact that imperfection is an essential feature of liberal democracy.