All your Net are belong to us

It seems appropriate to end on a geeky post title :) My last post will be pessimistic, which is delicious because I am a very optimistic person. However, when it comes to "Big Tech" practices in America today, it seems clear that ethics are sorely lacking. I remind you of Convio, which purports to be left-wing but actually provides service and consulting to anti-gay groups. How different are they from Symantec or Microsoft, which pretend to be progressive but then turn around and provide censorship software to the Chinese government (or in the case of MS, also vote against gay rights in Washington.

That said... I ain't no technological determinist. I don't think technology changes society; usually it's a two-way street. The Internet didn't change Western society -- rather, changes in Western society CREATED the Internet. And it's only a matter of time before the same thing happens in places like China and Saudi Arabia, where the strictest restrictions are placed on Internet technologies.