When I joined the Internet back in 1989-1990 or so, I honestly thought I had seen the greatest invention since mankind discovered fire. Now many years later I've seen a few things that proved me wrong, but just maybe also some things that proving me right.

The Bad

Artificial online segregation. This commercialism is creating havoc with the open information society I thought we where going towards and I get the really bad end of the stick here, as my country is small and has a low commercial value. This "BE AMERICAN" or be gone thing is really bad and is just fueling latent racial segregation as it limits what I have in common with people outside a limited commercially controlled area, because we simply don't have legal access to the same entertainment.

Political segregation, great firewalls... It was expected that some places wasn't going to embrace the Internet's open borders, but commercialism is again rareing it's ugly head and supporting closed borders and Politicians is doing nothing to prevent it.

The Good

Open Source Software and social networking, this group isn't effected by this commercial segregation, so the Internet works with us here and has created a new way of life for people, one that I hope is giving people a more meaningful life.

Social networking, it is unfortunately battling with the commercial aspect, but it's also so young it hasn't been ruined yet and sites like facebook that I would never in a million years have thought of being worth my time, does allow me to get in contact with people I haven't seen in ten+ years and for people that grow up with this, they will never have to loss contact again. This to me is an amazing thing, unfortunately facebooks technology is very young and someone has forgotten to tell them there is more than one language in the world, I for one need support for posting in different languages, since all my contacts doesn't read/write the same language. Facebook terms where you sign over your firstborn if you post them to facebook, thats just crazy and has to go.

I was loosing faith in the "Information Age", due to the bad, but there is so much promise too, I just hope I get to see the commercial and political walls crumble and fall before my time is over.