KES: In recent years there has been a vast expansion of access to knowledge, in nearly every area. Normally, this is thought of as a positive development, but there are exceptions, such as losses of privacy, or the proliferation of know-how to make weapons. How serious are the risks that we will know too much?

Bruce Sterling: I'm unconvinced that access to data equates to "knowledge." I wouldn't go so far as to claim that we suffer from a cult of the amateur, but, thanks to search engines, this is the golden age of the dilettante. It's easy to imagine that we know more than we do.

Diplomats, scientists, foreign correspondents, television stringers, they all complain that their enterprises are in sharp decline, that we have an irrational Internet echo chamber instead of original investigation by trained professionals. Having lived in Serbia, where even Serbians clearly don't know what's going on, I'm inclined to put some credence in this. There are failed states all over the planet, and vast slums and shanty-towns in which things of great consequence are going on about which the Internet knows practically nothing.