Great Article in this week's Economist (Technology Quarterly: "Cat and Mouse, on the web") about the feverish battle being waged between the censors of authoritarian governments and citizens wishing to gain information. Incidentally, the Far Eastern Economic Review reports on the same subject ("The Geopolitics of Asian Cyberspace"). Although it does not appear that any clear victory is in sight for the anti-censorship camp, I think it does affirm a point that Fareed Zakaria made in his book The Future of Freedom: as citizens of a closed society become ever wealthier and more educated, it becomes harder and costlier for governments to suppress their dissent and freedom of action. As more people come to afford computers and gain access to the world wide web, the number of locations and activities a censor-minded state has to monitor explodes accordingly. And just as few governments have been successful at defeating black markets, this fight against the wisdom of the masses is most likely a lost cause.