The computer has often been accused of being the bureaucrat’s tool—the prime instrument that enables government officials to tie down our freedom of movement and manipulate information against our interests. Solzenitsyn in Cancer Ward makes information bureaucracy very graphic when he writes that “as every man goes through life he fills in a number of forms for the record. … There are hundreds of little threads radiating from every man, millions of threads in all. If all these threads were suddenly to become visible the whole sky would look like a spider’s web and if they materialized as rubber bands, buses, trams and people would lose the ability to move…” Solzenitsyn went on in his book to express concern that such a cobweb could be manipulated by those in a position to control the threads.

For this Russian author the illuminated cobweb symbolized strangulation and suffocation by bureaucracy in an authoritarian society. But I think a cobweb is also a description of the social interactions which give us the basis for a democratic society. Without informational interlinkages of this kind we would not have developed the infrastructure which guards our liberty and security, while we seek to obtain and share the world’s opportunities and resources. Of course some societies may allow the infrastructure to evolve in some disorganized way—like the mess of tickertape that inundates a visiting hero in New York—and we may end up with a very confused world. Or one can deliberately unravel the fabric of society as advocated by those who reject contemporary society and seek the simple life in isolation.