The Wall Street Journal

Just before U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Hanoi late last month, Vietnamese authorities redoubled their assault on Internet dissent. Two more bloggers were arrested and another due to be released had his sentence extended. Dissident websites came under cyber attack, taking them offline at a time when they most needed to be visible.

How hard would it be to go a week without Google? Or, to up the ante, without Facebook, Amazon, Skype, Twitter, Apple, eBay and Google? It wouldn't be impossible, but for even a moderate Internet user, it would be a real pain. Forgoing Google and Amazon is just inconvenient; forgoing Facebook or Twitter means giving up whole categories of activity. For most of us, avoiding the Internet's dominant firms would be a lot harder than bypassing Starbucks, Wal-Mart or other companies that dominate some corner of what was once called the real world.

In "The Master Switch," Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia University, argues that the Internet also risks becoming a closed system unless certain steps are ...

In "The Master Switch," Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia University, argues that the Internet also risks becoming a closed system unless certain steps are ...

... striking in the tribal areas at least 16 times in October and 22 times in September, according to a tally by the New America Foundation think tank. ...

Still uncomfortably large: $668 billion and growing, according to estimates by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a deficit watchdog. ...

... according to the New America Foundation think tank, which tracks the strikes. Some German officials have criticized the quality of US intelligence, ...

In the physical universe, chemical reactions are limited by the molecules that are close to one another and the ease with which they can meet up. You can run an electrical current through a chemical bath and synthesize the basic amino acids that form the building-blocks of human life. You cannot synthesize a llama.

The tweets started arriving in August, and they did not mince words. One of the first accused the South Korean government of being "a prostitute of the United States." The Twitter account, under the name "uriminzok," or "our nation," seemed to be part of a sprawling North Korean digital operation that included a Facebook account (registered as a man interested in "meeting other men," but solely for "networking purposes") and a series of YouTube videos meant to celebrate the might of the North Korean military.

... in Pakistan in September, in part, to disrupt the suspected plot. There were 22 reported strikes in September, according to the New America Foundation.