We think of them as mobile phones, but the personal computer, mobile phone and the Internet are merging into some new medium like the personal computer in the 1980s or the Internet in the 1990s.

The two parts of technology that lower the threshold for activism and technology is the Internet and the mobile phone. Anyone who has a cause can now mobilize very quickly.

Although we leave traces of our personal lives with our credit cards and Web browsers today, tomorrow's mobile devices will broadcast clouds of personal data to invisible monitors all around us.

The great power of the Internet is it allows people who don't know each other... to connect with people with shared interests. The shared interests might be that 'I have a kid with leukemia.' Or, 'I'm a Nazi.' It gives marginalized people more power.

There is never going to be a substitute for face-to-face communication, but we have seen since the alphabet, to the telephone and now the Internet, that whenever people find a new way to communicate, they will flock to it.

The uptake on mobile phones in Africa is phenomenal.