Calling China's online censorship system a 'Great Firewall' is increasingly trendy, but misleading. All walls, being the creation of engineers, can be breached with the right tools.

Many of us were a little to early to assume that the most logical uses of the internet in authoritarian states would be to empower people. And to force them towards participation in politics. If you look at most authoritarian states, they are very grim places to live in. The only good thing about it is fast internet. That's the only way you can find some meaning in an otherwise very dark and gloomy life.

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.

In short, Google prefers a world where we consistently go to three restaurants to a world where our choices are impossible to predict.

One would think that by the second decade of the twenty-first century, the intellectual poverty of technocracy and the primacy of politics over it would be a well-established truth in need of no further defense.

Look at something like cooking. Now, you would hear a lot about smart kitchens and augmented kitchens. And what do those smart kitchens actually do? They police what's happening inside the kitchen. They have cameras that distinguish ingredients one from each other and that tell you that shouldn't mix this ingredient with another ingredient.

Information wants to eat brie.