Part 4: New (Cyber)World Order
The conference's second day opened with a panel on tribalism and globalism (and a world covered with a freak snowstorm outside). James Adams discussed cyber-warfare; Adam Clayton Powell III, international communication; and Li Lu, the potential destruction of China through openness and free thought.

Adams recounted some recent U.S. military war games in which a few hackers were able to disable operations and destroy reliable lines of communication. Once you lose the trust that orders are coming from known sources, the entire command and control system breaks down, he said

No company working with sensitive material should buy hardware or software from France, Israel, China, or Russia, asserted Adams. The threat of technology sabotage and terrorism are poorly prepared for, and individual citizens may wind up with the ability to cripple nation-states. He cited the "ILOVEYOU" virus as a prominent example of a contagion released by a single person that was effectively batted away, but at an estimate cost of billions of dollars of lost time, data, and productivity.

Powell spoke about his work with the Freedom Forum, a self-funded non-profit that trains people around the world in using technology and the Internet to further democracy and the free flow of information.

He spoke about travelling around the world and finding Internet shacks in the poorest and remotest areas that offered people the chance to send e-mail, use the Web, and engage in live chat with scattered family for relatively small sums. In Peru, he saw "families lining up, watching the clocks with balloons" waiting to celebrate a far-away relative's birthday online.

Powell rejected the "one person, one machine" fallacy, noting that wherever they went, this kind of shared use is going on. The Internet circumvents and confronts censorship, he asserted. "The Net is now the most important factor in freedom of the press and defeat of totalitarian government." The new connectivity between geographically distant members of communities "gives a whole new meaning to the word 'diaspora.'"

Powell talked about online voting, and recounted how, in Arizona, a voting experiment resulted in five- to six-fold increases in participation across poorer and more remote communities, because politicians went out to tribal councils with laptops, so that people could come in and vote.

Finally, Li Lu concluded the panel with an intense and personal recounting of his history, starting with his childhood, in which his parents and grandparents were taken away during the Cultural Revolution. His adopted family was killed during the 1976 earthquake, which opened his eyes to the government's lies. "Nobody cares," he said. All disaster relief was directed toward helping Communist officials.

Under Deng Xiao-Peng, society opened up enough for him to realize he wasn't alone in his opinions, and that a better life existed. Although the government had always portrayed Western living as hell, once the Chinese were exposed to visions of it, he said, the thinking was "Gosh, I wish I lived there in hell."

He and a few others formed the nucleus of a group in 1989 that started protesting and attracting others, that turned into thousands and then millions. Despite the terror of facing the military in Tiananmen Square, "we are all heroes down in our heart."

Lu talked about many of his friends inside and outside China, who he calls part of "Generation Tiananmen," who are leading new movements, and founding new companies. Lu runs a venture capital firm raising funds in the United States for investment in Asia. An electronic mailing list of information banned by the Chinese government has increased to just under a million subscribers, he noted.

He's "never been this excited" about the potential for change, noting that "technology and humanity goes hand-in-hand." During Q&A that followed, Lu added, "Global commerce has tremendous impact on world peace and stability," and the planet has achieved something akin to "permanent peace."