Bringing the Internet under control

Mr Susskind is a keen observer of the digital world's dangers and his analysis is enhanced, for American readers, by his outsider's eye

THE DIGITAL REPUBLIC: On Freedom and Democracy in the 21st Century

Author: Jamie Susskind

Publisher: Pegasus Books

Price: $28.95

Pages: 304

Anyone who lived through the dot-com boom of the late 1990s remembers the cyber-utopianism of the early days. I felt it myself as a young journalist traversing Silicon Valley to report on the new world being born. I wrote a book about eBay, based on interviews with its visionary founder, Pierre Omidyar. In keeping with the heady spirit of the times, I gave the book, which stressed eBay’s ability to be a force for global economic opportunity, the idealistic title The Perfect Store. 

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