Thomas Friedman

Put all of this democratization of information together and what it means is that the days when government could isolate their people from understanding what life was beyond their borders or even beyond their village are over. Life outside can't be trashed and made to look worse than it is. And life inside can't be propagandized and made to look better than it is. Thanks to the democratization of information, we all increasingly know how each other lives - no matter how isolated you think a country might be. The minute you think you have devised a new, higher, thicker wall to hide behind, you discover that technology has found a way to lower it. And the minute you think you have drawn a new line in the sand to protect you, technology finds a way to erase it. Raul Valdes Vivo, the rector of the Cuban Communist Party's Nico Lopez school for advanced studies outside of Havana, put it so well in an interview with National Geographic (June 1999). He was asked about the difficulties Castro's Cuba faced in maintaing socialist principles, even as it was increasingly being forced to adopt capitalist means to survive. "Cuba is no longer an island," he mused. "There are no islands anymore. There is only one world."