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In the years since the first social networks went online, the disruption had spread to government, creating shifts in power structures as large as those enabled by the introduction of the printing press centuries ago. "Connection technologies, including social media, tend to devolve power from the nation state and large institutions to individuals and small institutions," said Alec J. Ross, senior innovation advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in an interview. "Nothing demonstrated that more than the power to publish and distribute at great scale by historically disempowered individuals with inexpensive devices."

"Educity", as the Johor complex is called, reflects Malaysia's grand strategy to become a centre for Western education. The country wants to meet strong demand among Asia's new middle classes for English-language schooling. It also worries about its brain drain (over 300,000 university-educated Malays work abroad). Having watched Asian children flock west to spend a lot of money on British and American schools, the government decided a few years ago to try to reverse the trend. It has campaigned to persuade Western schools and colleges to come and set up branch campuses. The Malaysian proposition to Asian parents is simple and beguiling: come to these famous schools and universities in our country and get the same degrees and qualifications as in Britain or America for half the price.

Social media such as Facebook and Twitter have played a major role in motivating some of the demonstrators in the run-up to the rally, which went ahead despite a police ban and lockdown imposed on sprawling Kuala Lumpur on the eve of the July 9 protest. The demonstration organizer, Bersih 2.0 -- a coalition of 63 NGOs (non-government organizations) that wants changes such as updated electoral rolls and a longer election campaign period -- has its own Facebook page, attracting a similar number of "likes" as the page urging Najib to step down, with 190,000+ fans at the time of this posting. The latest notable update is another petition, requesting 100,000 backers for a Bersih 3.0 -- although organization head Ambiga Sreenavasan has said she does not foresee any similar protests in the immediate future.

The iHub is Nairobi's nerve center for technology; a place where we can grab coffee, create apps, find funders and build businesses. It's where the community of web and mobile programmers connect with each other, businesses, the government and academia.

Social entrepreneurs see problems much as economists see them: as simple inefficiencies. Sometimes, indeed, inefficiency alone is involved - for example, mushroom growers not having access to discarded coffee grounds. But in many other situations, the problem is politics, which is to say the clashing interests of people. Many social entrepreneurs treat power as something to work around. They can be clearer in articulating what they are for than in stating what they oppose, and why. They often take the holes of the system as a given and do their best to plug the leaks.

Technology has empowered all sides in this skirmish: the rioters, the vigilantes, the government and even the ordinary citizens eager to help. But it has empowered all of them to different degrees. As the British police, armed with the latest facial-recognition technology, go through the footage captured by their numerous closed-circuit TV cameras and study chat transcripts and geolocation data, they are likely to identify many of the culprits. Authoritarian states are monitoring these developments closely. Chinese state media, for one, blamed the riots on a lack of Chinese-style controls over social media. Such regimes are eager to see what kind of precedents will be set by Western officials as they wrestle with these evolving technologies. They hope for at least partial vindication of their own repressive policies.

The merger of globalization and I.T. is driving huge productivity gains, especially in recessionary times, where employers are finding it easier, cheaper and more necessary than ever to replace labor with machines, computers, robots and talented foreign workers. It used to be that only cheap foreign manual labor was easily available; now cheap foreign genius is easily available.

The 2011 Singapore General Elections was a water-shed event in Singapore's political history. Not because for the first time ever, an opposition party (the Workers' Party or WP) managed to secure a Group Representative Constituency (GRC) from the PAP. Nor was it because the PAP's popular vote had fallen from 67 percent in 2007 to 60.1 percent. Rather, it was a result of Singapore's political landscape being dramatically altered with the advent of social media and the Internet. The Internet and Social Media sparked a new way of thinking for Singapore, especially in the political arena. While older Singaporeans relied on state controlled media agencies for their news and information, the Internet opened up a source of independent information that could not be tightly regulated or controlled  as  traditional media platforms. Singapore's World Press Freedom Index ranking is a dismal 136th out of 178 countries (assessed by Reporters Without Borders) and 151st out of 196 countries according to the Freedom of the Press 2010 Global Rankings report. As Singaporeans began to seek alternative viewpoints that were not expressed in the local media, websites like The Temasek Review and The Online Citizen cropped up. These sites gained popularity and support for publishing articles that were critical of the local government for the first time.

The state of Veracruz in Mexico wants to change its penal code to apply a lower charge against the jailed Twitter and Facebook users accused of terrorism for spreading unconfirmed rumors of an attack on local schools (link in Spanish). A proposed change in Veracruz's laws would permit the government to punish the two social-networking users now behind bars, but for a lesser offense of "disruption of public order," rather than the original charges of terrorism and sabotage. Those charges carry a maximum sentence of 30 years.

Six months after an uprising led by people like her ousted Hosni Mubarak and overturned the established order of the Arab world, Ms. Mehairy has joined the ranks of Egypt's newest business class: the entrepreneurs of the revolution. Instead of leaving Egypt as she had planned, she is staying to nurture a start-up called SuperMama, an Arabic-language Web site for women that has 10 local employees.

"The conditions under which our armed forces conduct operations are rapidly changing with the spread of blogs, social networking sites, and media-sharing technology, and further accelerated by the proliferation of mobile technology," writes Darpa in the SMISC announcement document. "Changes to the nature of conflict resulting from the use of social media are likely to be as profound as those resulting from previous communications revolutions. The effective use of social media has the potential to help the armed forces better understand the environment in which it operates and to allow more agile use of information in support of operations."