La mission de Google est d’organiser l’information mondiale et de la rendre universellement accessible et utile.

There are two basic types of dystopian future: the 1984 future and the Brave New World future. In the 1984 future, the government forces us to think and act in a certain way, driving undesirables into ghettos and threatening with physical harm those who think or act differently. In the Brave New World future (or possibly the Neil Postman future), the government doesn’t have to do anything to force our behaviour. Instead we’re given the tools to do whatever we want, creating an illusion of total freedom which no-one fights or questions until its too late and we realise we’ve lost the capacity for critical thought.

If we want to create online spaces to encourage serendipity, we might start by learning from cities.

A group of some 27,000 South Koreans is suing Apple for $26 million for what they claim are privacy violations from the collection of iPhone user location information.

When we use the word “serendipity” now, it’s usually to mean “a happy accident”. The parts of the definition that focus on sagacity, preparation and structure have slipped, at least in part, into obscurity. Our loss, I believe, is that we’ve lost sight of the idea that we could prepare ourselves for serendipity, both personally and structurally.

One of the biggest problems for law enforcement in the digital age is the inability to get real-time access to messages sent by potential criminals. In England, RIM has said it will actively cooperate with law enforcement as they investigate those behind the unrest. Although it cannot hand to police the contents of rioters’ messages, it can disclose information that could assist any investigation. A clause in the Data Protection Act allows RIM to disclose the names, contacts and times of prominent BlackBerry Messenger users in a certain area and at a certain time.

Two men have been jailed for four years for using Facebook to incite disorder.

South Korea has blamed Chinese hackers for stealing data from 35 million accounts on a popular social network.