Contemporary culture owes a lot to an angry ape, a cheeky plumber and a very hungry circle. The iconic trio of Super Mario, Donkey Kong and Pac Man were the founding fathers not only of a huge global industry but also of a global culture. Thanks to their dominance, the world of gaming is now one of the most homogenous in the world, with the same heroes doing battle in Nagasaki, Nebraska and Novosibirsk.

But this global culture was born in a very specific milieu — the Coke-fuelled, hormone-addled world of the local arcade. True, the games that entertained the mulleted teens of middle America in the Eighties, and later took over the world a decade later, largely came out of Japan. But an alternative existed. All the while,be found in "cramped offices in Cairo" as well as "on the streets of Tehran. From these locations and others, activists and technology geeks are rallying political 'flash mobs' that shake repressive governments, building new tools to skirt firewalls and censors, reporting and tweeting the new online journalism, and writing a bill of human rights for the internet age."

Even more euphoric was Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder and chief executive of Facebook. In 2015, he called the internet "a force for peace in the world." Connecting people on Facebook was building a "common global community" with a "shared understanding" of the problems confronting humanity.

Oh, happy days. Oh, glad, confident morning. Sadly, over the past two years, it has gradually become apparent that internet may pose a bigger threat to