Well, it‘s 2014, and I thank goodness the WELL is still here. I‘ve never been so happy to have an Internet account that doesn‘t belong to some ultra-rich creep.

It‘ll be hard, this year, not to dwell obsessively on the capering specters of the NSA, Snowden, Wikileaks, Bitcoin… 2013 turned out to be the year when the Digital Revolution trended Stalinist. Old-school Digital Bolsheviks scattered hapless in every direction, as Big Data Killer Bot Commissars scoured the darkening landscape, and Trotsky went to ground in Ecuador.

An extraordinary atmosphere of sullen, baffled evil, as the year
opens. I don‘t know what to compare 2014 to — except for many other glum post-revolutionary situations, when the zealots succeeded in toppling the status quo, then failed to install a just and decent form of civil order. The world in 2014 is like a globalized Twitter Egypt.

What‘s become of yesterday‘s august, sturdy, pre-digital institutions? For instance: why does the United States even have a Congress, in 2014? Is it habit? The Congress doesn‘t do anything now. Everybody despises them. They despise themselves even more than the public does.