Your observation about people using the Net to spread "dis and mis-information" parallels what came to mind reading hank's post. In retrospect it seems inevitable that propagandists and demagogues would figure out how to turn the Net to their advantage, and, specifically and chillingly, learn to overcome its supposed robustness-through-diversity that we were assured early on made the Net the dawning of a new age of truth and openness.

Right.

Joseph Goebbels developed the "Big Lie" to capitalize on his society's information architecture: Broadcast radio and printed newspapers; centralized technology. Take control of the origin transmitters and printing pressed, and you can repeat one or a small selection of "big lies" over and over and over until the population can't help but believe it. You control all channels of information, they have no alternative.

The Net was supposed to be the antidote to that. But it was just a matter of time until somebody figured out how to subvert its architecture with a modern equivalent of the "big lie": The net of a million lies. Enlist an army of volunteers, bloggers and netactivists, each analogous to one small transmitter broadcasting your message over and over. Organize them into a network, the modern equivalent of a phone tree; but contrary to popular speculation, don't centrally control the message all the time, but rather, encourage "freelancing", like "discovering" Obama's secret Kenyan birth and then using email to spread the word far and wide.

Multiply that by thousands of similarly spurious claims and outright lies every day, and you have a tactic much like a denial-of-service attack. Swamp the "infosphere" with corrupted data, drown out the truth and contrary messages. Keep the opposition dancing fulltime trying to respond to each and every freelance smear. Watch the legitimate business of government grind to a halt under the onslaught.

Welcome to American political propaganda 21st century style.

Never underestimate the ability of humans to think up a way to pervert even the most promising new technology.

The fault dear, RNE, lies not in our tech, but in ourselves.