Guardian, 11 June 2006

The internet is really just a giant machine for springing surprises. And this is - as programmers joke - a 'feature', not a bug. That is to say, the net's capacity to facilitate disruptive innovation was designed into it from the beginning. Essentially, if you can do something with data packets, then the internet will do it for you, with no questions asked. So, ever since the network was switched on in January 1983, smart programmers have been doing clever things with data packets and in the process springing surprises on the rest of us.