I think that we're now deep into a struggle for control over the Internet and there are various actors - state, corporate, civic, criminal and military. The great genius of the Internet is its interconnectedness, but this is also what makes it an incredibly difficult problem when things start to go wrong with it and when people exploit for their own purposes.

The Internet obviously changes things; we've seen that in the music industry above all else. As an author, I'm now having to deal with the fact that it's happening in the publishing industry as well. And publishing is going through a very difficult time. Some view it as positive, some negative, but nobody really knows how to deal with it. If you're an author it looks very challenging because your work can be pirated so easily and there's very little you can do about it.

The Internet has fashioned a new and complicated environment for an age-old dilemma that pits the demands of security against the desire for freedom.

In 2010, you have roughly 38 billion dollars spent by government on cyber and telecoms security and another 60 billion or so by private corporations. So approximately 100 billion dollars spent on security, mostly on technological solutions, which the corporates are offering governments in particular; it's a very high growth area. So everyone is climbing over each other to get the contracts for government procurement on this. There is undoubtedly an element of this and that's what encourages, in part, the whole idea of locking down the Internet.

The issue of cyber-security, cyber-crime, and cyber-malfeasance has an impact on a whole range of issues, not the least of which is civil liberties, political activity, and so on and so forth.

What we're going to get as this next generation grows up is more hacking skills and this is spreading geographically also - Africa is about to come on the scene, South and Central America are going to be major sources of hackers. These people have got to be engaged with.

I think that we're now deep into a struggle for control over the Internet and there are various actors - state, corporate, civic, criminal and military. The great genius of the Internet is its interconnectedness, but this is also what makes it an incredibly difficult problem when things start to go wrong with it and when people exploit for their own purposes.