Letters To Americans

The website Open Democracy is running a series called Letters to Americans. The current, twelfth letter is particularly interesting. It's from Faiza Al-Araji, an Iraqi mother who runs a website, with a response by Anthony Swofford, ex-US marine and author of a 1991 Gulf war memoir, Jarhead.

This makes me think of Andrei Sakharov's 1974 prediction of the internet, and the uses to which it would be put:

"Far in the future, more than 50 years from now, I foresee a universal information system (UIS), which will give everyone access at any given moment to the contents of any book that has ever been published or any magazine or any fact. The UIS will have individual miniature-computer terminals, central control points for the flood of information, and communication channels incorporating thousands of artificial communications from satellites, cables, and laser lines. Even the partial realization of the UIS will profoundly affect every person, his leisure activities, and his intellectual and artistic development. Unlike television... the UIS will give each person maximum freedom of choice and will require individual activity. But the true historic role of the UIS will be to break down the barriers to the exchange of information among countries and people."