THE VIRTUAL WORLD

In 2019, we celebrated 50 years of Internet since two computers made node-to-node communication in 1969. As the Internet becomes the public square and the marketplace of our world, it is increasingly becoming a contested terrain. Its potential for diffusing knowledge and subverting the traditional channels of information is tremendous. So it is not surprising that governments, corporations and even seemingly innocuous social networking sites all want to control and influence the way the Internet operates. It’s easy to see why. More than half of humanity is linked to this system— and the dramatic growth in Internet usage over the past decade is set to explode in coming years.