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This is in many ways a wonderful thing. There is strength in weak ties, as the sociologist Mark Granovetter has observed. Our acquaintances—not our friends—are our greatest source of new ideas and information. The Internet lets us exploit the power of these kinds of distant connections with marvellous efficiency. It’s terrific at the diffusion of innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, seamlessly matching up buyers and sellers, and the logistical functions of the dating world. But weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism.

The evangelists of social media don’t understand this distinction; they seem to believe that a Facebook friend is the same as a real friend and that signing up for a donor registry in Silicon Valley today is activism in the same sense as sitting at a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro in 1960.

When we designed the Internet the first time, our priorities were reliability, robustness and minimizing central points of failure or control. We are alarmed that Congress is so close to mandating censorship-compliance as a design requirement for new Internet innovations. This can only damage the security of the network, and give authoritarian governments more power over what their citizens can read and publish. The US government has regularly claimed that it supports a free and open Internet, both domestically and abroad. We cannot have a free and open Internet unless its naming and routing systems sit above the political concerns and objectives of any one government or industry. To date, the leading role the US has played in this infrastructure has been fairly uncontroversial because America is seen as a trustworthy arbiter and a neutral bastion of free expression. If the US begins to use its central position in the network for censorship that advances its political and economic agenda, the consequences will be far-reaching and destructive.

The Administration is reducing the influence of special interests by writing new ethics rules that prevent lobbyists from coming to work in government or sitting on its advisory boards. The Administration is tracking how government uses the money with which the people have entrusted it with easy-to-understand websites like recovery.gov, USASpending.gov, and IT.usaspending.gov. The Administration is empowering the public – through greater openness and new technologies – to influence the decisions that affect their lives.

You Can Do It Too!

It’s a gray, drizzly Saturday morning, but the children of the Danbury Connecticut Ward aren’t in their pajamas watching cartoons or playing video games. They’re busy making videos of their own. And their videos will help thousands of people learn about the Book of Mormon! It all started when their bishop had a great idea. Bishop Summerhays is a media expert who teaches children from many countries how to use technology to create positive messages. Why not teach the children in his ward the same thing? Now the children, joined by children from the Newtown Ward, are sitting at five long tables in the Primary room. Stacks of construction paper and poster board, pens, and scissors are on the tables. Each group will be making an animated video of a different Book of Mormon story:

Impressive services

Only last week Google splashed out on Writely, a web-based word processor that requires no downloads or installation and just runs in a browser window.

They are just the tip of an iceberg