WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Cyberspace And Virtual War.

Back in those carefree innocent 1990s when bombing Serbia was the road to world peace and spam was the ugliest thing on the net, the Anglo-American world was indulging one of its periodical bouts of end-of-history wishful thinking. As in 1918 and 1945, an American consensus of the great and the good was morally certain that a new era in international life had begun.

Tech optimism was a big part of that. The cyberworld was almost unspotted at that time, like a field of snow the day after a blizzard. How many digital Whigs prophesied the inevitable triumph of a radically free and democratic world based on the cyber utopia taking shape?

These days, the cyberworld looks more and more like the rest of the world – perhaps with more porn.

So it’s got that going for it, anyway. . . .