Nineteenth century American essayist Oliver Wendell Holmes once said: "The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market." The market today is becoming ever more complex, extending beyond simple telecommunications to embrace the newly discovered world of cyberspace.
In The Sovereign Individual (Macmillan Press, 1997), James Davidson and William Rees-Mogg argue that microprocessing will subvert and destroy the nation state, creating a new form of social organization the information society. This will liberate individuals, making them free to invent their own work and realize its full benefits. The greatest source of wealth will be ideas rather than physical capital. But not all the effects of this brave, new world are so positive. Less savory reaches of the information universe can be explored on the 10,000 sites on the World Wide Web devoted to pornography, from those offering pictures of topless centerfold models to ones which charge £1 a minute to view men and women performing sexual acts.
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