2:10 PM

Ten years ago, 70 million people used the Internet. There are more than 1.2 billion people on-line today, and that number is still growing. As projects like One Laptop Per Child come to fruition, we can imagine a future where it's possible to talk to almost anyone, anywhere in the world.

Which raises a question: What will we say to one another?

As the Internet entered popular consciousness in the mid-1990s, commentators speculated that it would lead towards increased international cooperation and harmony. As the Internet boomed in China early this decade, pundits predicted that connectivity would lead inexorably to democracy. Instead, as new groups have joined the on-line world, they've shaped it in their own image, building on-line worlds that can be as unfamiliar as a foreign country. And despite the potential for the Internet to connect people to information anywhere in the world, government controls of the net mean many users are encountering a locally censored internet.

Ethan Zuckerman offers a tour of the globalized Internet, looking at ways in which Internet users around the world are connecting with one another... and frequently misunderstanding each other. Along the way, we meet Nigerian spammers, Saudi feminists, Tunisian mapmakers and Chinese gold-farmers as well as the tools and guides necessary to navigate this growing new world.

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