So yes in theory there is a kind of a formal democracy and in many ways these were achievements and an improvement over the feudal system and more advanced than anything else in the world, but nothing that we ought to call democracy.

The person who wins the Nobel Prize is not the person who read the most journal articles and took the most notes on them. It's the person who knew what to look for. And cultivating that capacity to seek what's significant, always willing to question whether you're on the right track - that's what education is going to be about, whether it's using computers and the Internet, or pencil and paper, or books.

Why should workers agree to be slaves in a basically authoritarian structure? They should have control over it themselves. Why shouldn't communities have a dominant voice in running the institutions that affect their lives?

Technology provides means for expression and interchange and so on, so yes it should be free and open, but there are a lot of constraints on how its used.

There was a striking example of this in Pakistan when the US sent in Special Forces, to be honest, to kill Osama Bin Laden. He could easily have been apprehended and caught but their orders were to kill him.

To some degree it matters who's in office, but it matters more how much pressure they're under from the public.

Contemporary technology could be used to eliminate ownership and management of corporations. It could be used to provide - lets say Apple computers. In principle information technology could be used to provide direct information to the work force on the ground so that they could democratically decide what the company would do, eliminating the role of management. It could be used for that. People aren't developing technology for that purpose.