It is true that authoritarian governments increasingly see the internet as a threat in part because they see the US government behind the internet. It would not be accurate to say they are reacting to the threat posed by the internet, they are reacting to the threat poised by United States via the internet. They are not reacting against blogs, or Facebook or Twitter per se, they are reacting against organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy funding bloggers and activists.

I worry that as the problem-solving power of our technologies increases, our ability to distinguish between important and trivial or even non-existent problems diminishes.

When we get the remote Russian village online, what will get people to the Internet is not going to be reports from Human Rights Watch. It's going to be pornography, 'Sex and the City,' or maybe funny videos of cats.

Military commanders do not want to be tried for war crimes, even if those crimes are committed online.

Universities ought to be aware of the degree they would want to accept funding from governments like China to work on, say, face recognition technology.

The reason why there is more pessimism about technology in Europe has to do with history, the use of databases to keep track of people in the camps, ecological disasters.

Diplomacy is, perhaps, one element of the U.S. government that should not be subject to the demands of 'open government'; whenever it works, it is usually because it is done behind closed doors. But this may be increasingly hard to achieve in the age of Twittering bureaucrats.