Amid ongoing debates over the hazards of excessive digital exposure through such Web 2.0 social networking platforms as Facebook and Twitter, a new book by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger extols the virtues of forgetfulness.

Since the emergence of digital technology and global networks, forgetting has become an exception, Mayer-Schonberger writes in "Delete".

"Forgetting plays a central role in human decision-making," he argues. "It lets us act in time, cognizant of, but not shackled by, past events."

Mayer-Schonberger shared his theory on how to fight back against the digital panopticon with Reuters before giving a lecture at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in London.

- Padraig Reidy is news editor at Index on Censorship. The opinions expressed are his own.-

Solicitors Carter-Ruck have withdrawn the terms of an injunction preventing the Guardian from reporting a parliamentary question by Newcastle-under-Lyme Labour MP and former journalist Paul Farrelly.

This has been seen - rightly -  as a victory for free expression, and a demonstration of the amazing power of the web in the face of attempted censorship.

Once the Guardian had published its slightly cryptic story on its website last night, containing such tantalising phrases as: “Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret”, it was inevitable that people would go searching.

Within hours, the Internet was alive with speculation, links to leaked documents, and republication of cached articles. At one point on Tuesday morning, phrases relating to the case constituted four of Twitter’s top ten “trending topics” --- a scarcely believable profile for a story that, technically, no one was supposed to be talking about.

Carter-Ruck seem not to have noticed the mindset of an increasing number of web users: once we are told we can’t know something, modern web users will set about finding out about it with a gleeful determination --- and more often than not with neither the cautiousness nor the proprietary attitude to information that can slow down “traditional” reporting.

The Streisand Effect -- whereby attempts to censor information end up ensuring the information is only spread more widely, is something that lawyers and judges are going to have to figure out.

The strong libertarian culture of the Internet quite simply means that you cannot get away with telling people what to do, and what to read, while surfing. Today’s Twitter triumph is more a victory for the culture of online social networking than it is for the technology.

And an important victory it is. What was at stake here was not merely a newspaper’s right to tell a story, but the very principal of open democracy: if newspapers and other media cannot report everyday parliamentary proceedings without fear of the courts, it is not just the journalism industry that suffers: it is the common citizen’s ability to participate in, and scrutinise, politics.

-Joe White is chief operating officer at Gandi, an Internet domain name registration firm. The opinions expressed are his own.-

Despite the importance of domain names for companies and the extraordinary amount of money many have paid for them, the vast majority of businesses are unprepared for imminent changes to the Internet.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the international body that oversees the structure of the internet, is liberalising the market for domain name extensions – the .com or .net part of a web address – from the beginning of 2010. This means that anyone, in theory, can apply to operate an extension. So alongside .com, .net, and .org, we will see .whateveryoulike.

Historically, companies have considered their domain to be a critical part of their brand identity. Some domains have been sold for millions of dollars – sex.com was reportedly sold for $14 million – and multinational companies often register up to 20,000 different variations of their brand to try and stop opportunists exploiting it.  However, despite this historic investment and interest, the vast majority (two thirds) of businesses are unprepared for imminent changes, according to some research we did a little while ago in conjunction with the Future Laboratory.

This is interesting given that there are real opportunities for companies. It will mean companies can readdress the way they communicate with customers, partners, or investors. We’ve already seen a shift in consumer behaviour where the high-street and virtual world have blended. The growth in blogging and social networking means people have also shifted their identity online. The liberalisation of top level domain names will help to blend the activities of both businesses and consumers with the potential to create a personalised brand experience.

Toyota, for example, could create the .toyota domain and register europe.toyota and usa.toyota, and set up sites for individual brands (highlander.toyota) and use targeted domains for different markets such as customers and suppliers (suppliers.toyota, dealers.toyota, buying.toyota). Or, Nike could create a personalised brand experience using yourname.nike, with training programmes, suggested products, networking pages which could link with sponsored athletes and so on. In addition, some companies could do one-off marketing campaigns or initiatives to support individual product launches. For example, Tastyhamburgersandhealthysalads.mcdonalds or Doveforrealwomen.unilever.

Indicators suggest that consumers will embrace this change. As part of the same research, we interviewed 1,000 consumers and one in five (19 per cent) said an extension such as .nike or .microsoft would be memorable. Considering only 24 per cent think .com is memorable, this shows the future potential for branded top-level domains.

However, while liberalisation of domain names is exciting, there are concerns over regulation. Some companies, such as Microsoft, have called for a staged roll-out, rather than full liberalisation, to ensure potential problems can be dealt with.

For example, should .apple be given to Apple the company, or to an apple growing co-operative in Wisconsin? What about top level domain names which play on morality or religion? The Vatican has already registered its concern with ICANN that making .god available could lead to serious, and potentially violent, dispute.

At the moment, ICANN is still developing the processes for dealing with issues such as this. It created an Implementation Recommendation Team (IRT) to look at concerns expressed about trademark protection. The team’s proposals are currently out for public comment before being incorporated into the process for liberalisation. ICANN is expected to start taking applications for new top-level domains between January and March 2010, and it anticipates between 300-500 to begin with.

For us, this is an exciting change. But if liberalisation is to bring the benefits it promises, it needs to be handled carefully. The opportunities are diverse for different types of businesses, and so long as concerns are carefully managed, we think this is a major shift in the internet that companies cannot ignore.

What if the Internet is not really a utopian democratic catalyst of change?

The Web is often seen as a positive means of instilling democratic freedoms in countries under authoritarian rule, but many regimes are now using it to subvert democracy, Evgeny Morozov, a contributing editor at "Foreign  Policy", proposes.

The Internet can actually inhibit rather than empower civil society, Morozov, argued in a lecture on Tuesday at London's Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.

Social media platforms are being used by certain governments to create a "spinternet" to influence public opinion. They are also being used as part of a process of "authoritarian deliberation" to try and increase the legitimacy of authoritarian rule, he said.

Morozov spoke with Reuters after the lecture.

- Mic Wright is Online News Editor at Stuff. The views expressed are his own -

Google juice – it sure isn't tasty but it is vital for anyone writing news online. The slightly irksome term refers to the mysterious combination of keywords and linking that will drag a webpage to the top of Google's search pages.

While the exact way Google's search algorithm works is largely a mystery to outsiders, news sites know it's vital to write headlines stuffed with the keywords that the search engine seeks out.

Online, the perfect punning headlines created by The Sun newspaper's super sub-editors just won't cut it. News stories on the web are all about the facts and the most successful sites are constantly checking to see what keywords will send you soaring up the Google search rankings. If you story isn't on the front page, it's not getting clicks, the less clicks you get the less likely it is that your advertisers' ads are going to get seen.

Now Google has announced that it's been working on a brand new version of its search engine and it's likely that online headlines are about to get even more straight forward. The new iteration of Google's most profitable invention is codenamed Caffeine thanks to its speediness. It has already been made available for users to test and besides the noticeable increase in speed, it appears to make search a more real time experience than we've previously seen.

The move to real time search, showing web pages in search results as soon as they appear, is a response to the instantaneous nature of Twitter which has recently got the jump on Google when it comes to breaking news. Currently there is a slight but noticeable lag with Google results – its search crawlers (programmes that scour the web to see what sites have been updated) don't grab changes immediately. But with the new version of the search engine they will.

This slight change in approach will make the way news organisations write their headlines even more important. It will also be like pressing the fast forward button. News writers will need to get their stories up faster and add new information swiftly to ensure that they remain high in the Google search rankings. A test by Mashable found that the new Google Search algorithm rewarding news gatherers for adding new information to their stories by placing them higher in the search results.

The new Google relies even more on keywords than the old version. Headline writers jobs have just got a lot harder. For readers, it'll mean more and more matter of fact headlines carefully crafted to include the keywords that Google's crawlers are after rather than created to entertain you. The days of the pithy, pun packed headline are over, at least online.

– Eric Auchard is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are his own –

The Chinese government has backed away from mandating filtering software on all personal computers in China, in a move that averts a dangerous escalation in its censorship powers.

But however controversial and unworkable China’s plan to require Internet filters on PCs proved to be, Western firms have largely themselves to blame for creating and selling such filters in the first place.

The danger rears its head whenever technology created to solve some specific security problem is put to new and unintended use, not just in repressive regimes like China, Iran or Saudi Arabia, but professed freedom-loving countries in Europe or the USA.

“What is good and what is evil?” asks Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at Finnish anti-virus software company F-Secure Corp. “It is really a very basic problem that security people face.”

A computer password cracker in the wrong hands is considered malicious, of course. But corporate network administrators rely on the same tools to recover lost documents when employees forget computer passwords. Voice recognition software used in corporate call centres to automate and improve customer service can be used by police to wiretap suspects on a grand scale.

On Tuesday, China’s official news agency reported that a government ministry had abruptly backed down from requiring that every PC sold in China include a censorship program called “Green Dam-Youth Escort”.

The software blocks web sites using a blacklist of keywords judged to be sexual or politically sensitive, or flesh-coloured images it assumes are naked bodies. But University of Michigan researchers found that the software developed by a Chinese firm had liberally borrowed the code of parental control software CyberSitter from the California-based firm Solid Oak.

Mobile network maker Nokia Siemens Networks was criticized last month after the Iran election protests for supplying “deep packet inspection” technology to mobile phone companies which Iran’s government allegedly used to track online dissidents. The same software for so-called “lawful intercepts” is widely used in phone networks around the world, be it Iran, China or the United States. The main differences are only how far network monitoring goes and to what uses such information is put.

These issues cannot be dismissed merely as unauthorized uses by bad cops in foreign lands. All the world’s biggest technology suppliers play some role in creating security tools that have Janus-like qualities, depending on the intentions of their users.

The dark side of the Internet is not some isolated corner. It is built with the same tools “good guys” use with the best of intentions, without considering their Orwellian surveillance potential. It is just the dual use of networked, interconnected technologies.

Companies such as IBM, Cisco, Intel and Dell are some of the dozens of vendors that market remote data recovery tools to police agencies that can be used to remotely monitor suspects. Once available commercially, it’s only a matter of time before such software is sold or copied for use by authorities in repressive regimes.

Canada’s Absolute Software sells such software for network administrators to track the location and use of all corporate laptops or Blackberries used in their organizations. If a computer is lost or stolen, it can be told to phone the factory every 15 minutes. Absolute then turns over the Internet address of the machine to police to recover the device. In countries with fewer safeguards, such tools can be used to snoop on or prosecute political dissidents.

Hypponen says computers have raised a host of issues that hardly existed in the Cold War era. “Monitoring traditional mail can be done, but takes a lot of manpower,” he says. “E-mail monitoring can be done which takes very little manpower.”

The very openness of the Internet has created a vast market for security tools used for Web filtering, network monitoring and text or video surveillance.

The power of technology to do good needs to be weighed against its powers to do evil. The many positive tasks computers perform for us need to be set against their growing powers as surveillance tools and mechanisms of repression. Just because a technology can be built, doesn’t mean it should be. As consumers, we need to be careful what we wish for in the way of modern conveniences.

– At the time of publication Eric Auchard did not own any direct investments in securities mentioned in this article. He may be an owner indirectly as an investor in a fund. –

(Editing by Martin Langfield)

– Eric Auchard is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own –

No one can easily define it.

But the next phase of the computer revolution is busy being born out of the ashes of the current economic crisis. The new approach delivers computing power as a service over the Web, like an electric utility, instead of making customers buy computers they manage themselves.

It goes by the hazy term of “cloud computing.”

Forget your tidy distinctions between hardware and software, networking and storage, the Web and the desktop. Most disappear as they merge into the cloud.

Clouds are located in centralized data centers that can house thousands of pizza-sized boxes, networked computers that can each process millions of transactions. They take advantage of the latest software that go by buzzwords like Web 2.0, virtualization and open source.

Always in search of the next big idea, the technology industry has latched onto the cloud as its big new organizing principle, once more normal corporate spending patterns return.

“Compelling economics will ultimately force you to move to clouds,” Erich Clementi, IBM’s general manager of cloud computing, told a Dublin conference last week. IBM is setting up centralized cloud computing centers across the globe.

Six months into a financial crisis that has stifled most corporate initiative, two of the world’s largest technology companies are taking the offensive.

Network gear leader Cisco has jumped into the market for big business computers called servers, while computer maker IBM is in talks to buy Sun Microsystems, another server maker, in its biggest merger deal ever, sources say. The value of the deal could run up to $8 billion.

Both Cisco and IBM aim to capitalize on the emerging shift to cloud computing, in particular by grabbing bigger slices of the data center supply market. They are looking to turn vast farms of server hardware and software into utility services that customers can rent.

The promise of the cloud is to do away with the need of organizations and individuals to maintain their own computer hardware, software, storage and network gear. The cloud metaphor is used to disguise the complexity of bringing all these pieces together. It’s the difference between owning and repairing a car yourself or leasing one with a mechanic to keep it running.

These actions, as they play out in coming years, have hundreds of companies large and small reassessing their strategies ahead of what Wall Street analysts are predicting will be a wave of mergers in the tech world. This consolidation could sweep up not only hardware makers, but software, networking, data storage and semiconductor suppliers as well as Web services.

CUMULO-NEBULOUS

There is no agreement on how to define the cloud. There are complicated academic definitions and others full of self-serving marketing spin. Computer maker Dell, created an industry uproar by trying to trademark “cloud computing” last year, but has retreated after widespread criticism they were claiming ownership for a generically accepted phrase.

The notion of centralized utility-scale computing dates is decades-old, dating back to the 1960s when corporations rented time slots on mainframes. Web hosting services proliferated during the 1990s. The term “cloud” to describe the inner workings of the Internet-at-large date back to the 1970s.

This is all part of a long shift from hardware-based computing to software and now Web-based computing. Clouds allow unused computing resources to be shared, or “virtualized,” and reused by other customers, improving efficiency. To further cut costs, most rely on inexpensive open-source software.

But unlike these earlier forms of managing dedicated machines on behalf of individual clients, cloud computing takes advantage of virtualization technology to reuse the same computing capacity again and again. Online retailer Amazon.com has dubbed this approach as “elastic” computing capacity and is making inroads with the idea.

The dominant players include not just hardware makers like Cisco and IBM and computer rival Hewlett-Packard. There are big name Internet services or software providers such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft, which deliver a range of pre-packaged software services to both start-ups and established businesses. Hot Web companies like Facebook use cloud computing to deliver thousands of different services to tens of millions of users everyday.

Earlier this month, the Financial Times quoted Microsoft research head Rick Rashid as estimating that 20 percent of all the computer servers in the world are now sold each year to a small number of Internet companies — Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and Amazon were ones he named. Computer industry margins, long in decline, stand to benefit as cloud services are sold as packages rather as boxes. Selling the same capacity repeatedly has benefits.

ELASTIC CAPACITY

Growth in computer servers used to run business operations has flattened out from their spending heyday in the 1990s. Computing is undergoing a transformation as entrenched ways of selling hardware and software as separate products are under attack. Customers are fed up running complicated systems without clear payback, especially as they look to slash costs in the downturn.

The industry is now plowing most of their new investments into cloud services rather than separate computer products. Start-up promoter and conference organizer Dealmaker Media says the cloud is one of the categories still getting funding by Silicon Valley venture capitalists. It charts $150 million invested in 25 firms in 2008 and so far in 2009.

Some clouds will be hosted by established systems integrators, Internet or telecom service operators ranging from EDS, now a unit of HP, to Amazon to BT or AT&T. Other clouds will be built to sit in-house by big companies to maintain complete control of how they work. Hybrids are emerging that mix private data centers with public cloud services to provide spare computing capacity only when needed.

Market research firm Gartner Inc estimates that cloud services revenue should top $56 billion this year, growing 21 percent from 2008, despite the credit crunch. It forecasts the market to reach $150 billion in 2013.

Wall Street is eagerly handicapping the takeout potential of dozens of downstream technology companies that will need to seek allies in the land of giants.

Possible targets range from equipment makers Network Appliance, Brocade or Juniper to storage/virtualization company EMC/VMware to consulting services such as Accenture or CapGemini. Holdouts are likely to be forced to make partnerships with Cisco, IBM or HP, to survive.

The cloud concept has emerged as the best hope for a maturing computer industry. The hope is this will create conditions for a yet to be fully imagined wave of new businesses, run from the clouds.

– At the time of publication Eric Auchard did not own any direct investments in securities mentioned in this article. He may be an owner indirectly as an investor in a fund. For previous columns, Reuters’ customers can click on — – Eric Auchard is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own –

– Leslie Harris is the president and CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, DC. The views expressed are her own. —

In the wake of troubling reports as recently as last year that Western companies were assisting China with Internet censorship and the unmasking of cyber-dissidents, governments around the world seemed poised to regulate the conduct of Internet companies. Lawmakers appear to have stepped back from those efforts, but the challenges of advancing global Internet freedom remain.

The Global Online Freedom Act, drafted in the U.S. Congress, would have made it a crime for Internet companies to turn over personal information to governments in cases where that information could be used to punish dissent. The bill produced a firestorm of controversy. Human rights groups campaigned for swift passage, while the tech industry scrambled to stop the bill, which they viewed as a global eviction order from many difficult but emerging markets. At the same time, several members of the European Parliament proposed a European version of the measure, taking the accompanying controversy global.

Now policymakers seem far less certain that global Internet freedom will be served by imposing harsh mandates on Internet companies that provide crucial services to customers in repressive regimes. The bill has not been reintroduced in the U.S. Congress this year, and earlier this month, a top European regulator, European Union Telecommunications Commissioner Viviane Reding, dismissed the notion of Europe passing its own Global Internet Freedom Act, saying that she was not convinced that “hard law” was the best way to address the issue.

For Internet executives who feared that hard-line regulatory mandates might force them out of many countries, Reding’s comments came as welcome relief. But celebration is premature. Threats to Internet freedom are growing and lawmakers’ concerns about industry’s role remain rightly high.  Those who choose to misconstrue Reding’s remarks as a free pass on this important issue do so at their peril.

Now is the time that Internet and technology companies must step up and take on the very challenges that the Global Internet Freedom Act was intended to address in order to ensure that their services and technologies do not become tools for surveillance and oppression.

Lest companies argue that the problem is too big and complex for any one company to make a difference, there is a responsible way forward. Late last year, a diverse coalition of leading information and communications companies, major human rights organizations, academics, investors and technology leaders launched the Global Network Initiative, which seeks to provide a framework to help information and telecommunications companies chart an ethical and accountable path forward through the growing demands from countries to take actions that infringe on the freedom of expression and privacy rights of their users.

Equally important, the initiative promotes collective action to uphold the rule of law and the adoption of public policies that protect and respect freedom of expression and privacy on the global network. Three technology giants – Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! – have shown critical leadership by committing to the Global Network Initiative. Now, others in the industry need to step up and make that commitment as well.

Companies that join the initiative will find its requirements both rigorous and fair. Signatories will have two years to implement a range of commitments including conducting human rights risk assessments, training employees, increasing transparency with users and employing a high degree of push back when government restrictions or demands appear to be inconsistent with fundamental rights. Members also commit to encouraging their joint venture and business partners to abide by the same principles.

The collective goal is not to provide the definitive rulebook for companies doing business in hundreds of countries with countless different legal regimes. Rather, the initiative provides a framework that allows companies to stand up for their customers, wherever they are in the world, and to draw support from a powerful community of business leaders and human rights advocates.

Now is a critical moment for this initiative. As regulators shift their focus away from immediate legislative action, the test for the Internet industry will be the extent to which it commits itself to addressing the challenge on its own. The Global Network Initiative provides a path toward responsible action. But its value depends in part on expanding participation from the companies in the sector and building a global identity.

One thing is certain: the challenge of upholding global Internet freedom is not going away. The next time a foreign government uses American Internet technology to spy on citizens, censor democratic materials or otherwise oppress users, the world will ask what the Internet industry is doing to address the problem.

Ignoring the issue was never a viable alternative. The world is on notice about these practices, and the next attempt to legislate the issue is always just around the corner. Companies that participate in the Global Network Initiative will be prepared to do the right thing regardless of whether or not there is a legal mandate to do so. At the end of the day, this is about leadership on a fundamental issue of human rights that will not go away.

Don Tapscott is chairman of the think tank nGenera Insight and the author of 13 books on the impact of the Internet on society. His latest book, Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing your World, discusses the Obama campaign and its implications for democracy. The views expressed are his own.

When President Obama announced last month that he’ll ask ordinary Americans to help him change America, it didn’t take long for the influencers inside the Washington beltway to ring the alarm: What happens if ordinary Americans actually come up with some new ideas to run government? Will things get out of control? Will they become bullies who will force Obama and Congressional lawmakers to bend to their will?

To me, they sound a lot like the traditional marketers who are worried that they’re losing control over their brand. Both marketers and lawmakers are struggling to adjust to a digital world where consumers and voters now have powerful tools to talk back, and even influence the brand or the policy. So let me give the Washington lawmakers the same message I have delivered to the marketers: Let go. You can’t control everything. The genie has slipped out of the bottle and she’s not coming back. And I think this is a really good thing.

For far too long, we’ve been living in what I’ve called a broadcast democracy. Voters only count during election time. They have little or no influence in between elections, when the lawmakers and influencers are in charge and citizenry is inert. The “you vote, I rule” model was all that was possible, until recently.

What the system has lacked until now are mechanisms enabling government to benefit from the wisdom and insight that a nation can collectively offer — on an ongoing basis. I’m not proposing some kind of direct democracy, where citizens can vote every night on the evening news or Web sites. That would be tantamount to a digital mob.

What I am proposing is a way to allow citizens to contribute ideas to the decision-making process – to get them engaged in public life. When citizens become active, good things can happen. We all learn from each other. Initiatives get catalyzed. People become active in improving their communities, country and the world.
This is long overdue. These days, the policy specialists and advisers on the public-sector payroll can barely keep pace with defining the problems, let alone craft the solutions. Government can’t begin to amass the in-house expertise to deal with the myriad challenges that arise. Governments need to create opportunities for sustained dialogue between voters and the elected.

Courtesy of the Internet, public officials can now solicit citizen input at almost no cost, by providing Web-based background information, online discussion, and feedback mechanisms. Government can now involve citizens in setting the policy agenda, which can then be refined on an ongoing basis. Such activity engages and mobilizes citizens, catalyzing real-life initiatives in communities and society as a whole.

When Obama launched Organizing for America, his dialogue with citizens, the idea was to channel the unprecedented grassroots campaign that propelled him to victory into the hard business of changing America. Organizing for America will “talk about and work on the pressing issues facing the country,” said Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe. Obama “believes in grassroots politics,” said Organizing for America’s executive director Mitch Stewart. “He’s going to be your partner. He’s going to listen.”

The first test of the idea came at the weekend, when thousands of meetings of Obama supporters took place across the country. What’s not clear yet is how the president intends to use the Internet to tap into the public’s thinking.

There are lots of Internet-enabled ways to engage America, from policy wikis, citizen juries, deliberative polling, ideation contests, and virtual town halls. I call one of the most promising the digital brainstorm. This is an online way to bring together policy officials and citizens in a real-time, moderated session, to exchange ideas and identify new policy issues and strategies and to mobilize the citizenry.

Here’s how it would work. The president would say, “We’re going to have a national discussion on revitalizing our cities. It starts on Monday at noon and ends the same week on Friday at noon. Anyone can participate through the Web 2.0 discussion community we’ve set up. If you don’t have Internet access, I’ve partnered with corporations, schools, libraries, community computing centers, and shopping malls to give you access. We’ll post background papers. We’ll organize the discussion by region and also by interest groups. There’ll be a business discussion, a discussion of public transit users, and so on. As you participate in the discussion rate the ideas that you come across and the best ideas will rise to the top. I’ll participate daily and give my views. At the end of the process we’ll explore our options for further action.”

The goal is to have a conversation in which people become engaged in political life; think about issues; get active in improving their communities; and mobilize society for positive change. Politicians and citizens alike would become more informed and learn from each other. And collectively we would take a step away from broadcast and toward participatory democracy. As an exercise in government 2.0, it could show that power can be exercised through people, not over people.

I’m currently working with government leaders in several countries to conduct brainstorms of all their citizens. Interestingly, the main topic of choice is climate change, using a question such as “How could our country more effectively contribute to the fight against global warming?” or “How could we reduce carbon emissions in our country?”

If Obama really wants to change America, he should hold digital brainstorms for all Americans, and he should make sure the young people – the Net Geners who have grown up digital – are involved. He’ll need a social movement of young people to bring about real change. This can only happen in public – not through backroom negotiations. Only through open struggle and conflict can a real and lasting change take place.

You can follow Don Tapscott on Twitter @dtapscott