Consider just one little aspect, something that is possible right now to anybody in the upper middle class who has a bit of computer skills, and is continually becoming cheaper and easier. I am talking about a personal, mobile TV studio and broadcasting station. All you need is a Powerbook, a digital video camera, and a phone line or a mobile phone. That means that because every violent happening is being broadcast to a worldwide audience, it is much more difficult to get away with waging war and slaughtering innocent people, like it seems more or less all governments of the Earth really get off on doing. Now imagine the very near future, where every town has several young people who love having a global audience, and are continually videotaping everything happening around them, and broadcasting it the same day in QuickTime format on the WWW, perhaps even in real time.
Despots be scared.
In the very near future, important events will not just be reported by big corporations who have to have their heads far up the ass of their sponsors and so can't be counted on to report anything like the truth if it threatens an ad account. News will be reported by millions, all over the world, and in living color. And this is just the immediate political ramifications, or the surface of them. Just imagine what this will do to creativity. Art and creativity is a powerful factor in Man's progress in understanding the Universe, himself, and his spirit, and computers and the Internet has already revolutionized what the creative person can do, and how he can get it out to people.