What happens when a government orders the Internet to be used as part of a repressive regime? Events of the past few weeks have given us some answers.

In my book, Zen and the Art of Information Security, I titled a chapter “Knights and Dragons.” The point was that people try to create dragons to rally supporters, and in the process they become a great knight leading the fight against the dragon. A well chosen angle can make a cause seem heroic and noble, solidifying support and rallying people when there is otherwise no reason to rally.

For all the second guessing, Monday-morning quarterbacking, and calls for outright beheading of the often heavily lambasted Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook ’s founder and CEO has finally made a move that should thrill both investors and users.

“Track Your Rivals - Then Eat Their Lunch” used to be the tagline of Compete Inc. , one of the Internet’s leading audience measurement firms. Now there is enough rivalry among providers of services that monitor and quantify who is signing on, clicking on, and reading Web ads and information that it’s tough to tell whose lunch is being eaten by whom.

An important facet of human intelligence is pattern recognition and the ability to see connections among things. This is an area where human beings are greatly superior to computers, but day by day, computers are getting closer to seeing what we see, to recognizing the same patterns.

For all the second guessing, Monday-morning quarterbacking, and calls for outright beheading of the often heavily lambasted Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook ’s founder and CEO has finally made a move that should thrill both investors and users.

Retailers are exploring new ways to connect with consumers above and beyond the usual e-commerce strategies of making Websites user friendly and adding attractive online merchandizing. UPDATED 6/29 3:00 PM

The mainstream media's obsession with the Web and social media is fascinating and often entertaining. In an attempt to keep up with us fast-paced, jive-talkin' Web people, and pretend to suddenly be all inclusive, household news names like Anderson Cooper now incorporate Twitter and Tweets as part of their regularly scheduled reporting.