When was the last time you went online? Within the last hour? The last five minutes? Are you, in fact, checking your emails on your phone with one hand while you flip through this magazine? Are you half-wondering what you might tweet about it?
In 2014, the internet is where most of us live. That goes for the whole planet. Once in a small café in Koraput, a rural town in Orissa, in the east of India, a teenage boy asked me ‘what’s your name?’ Within moments he was showing me my own Facebook profile on his smartphone screen. That’s in a place that never got landlines.
When we lived in towns, we marched on the streets to get our voices heard. Now it’s easier than ever to mobilise mass protests online, particularly thanks to campaigning sites like Avaaz and Upworthy, but it’s also easier than ever for those in power to ignore them.
The Collected Works of Kevin EG Perry 