The great commonplace of our time also happens to be true: the world is more connected than ever before. But if it is more connected, the world is also more administered—its people more coerced and surveilled, more susceptible to the designs of authoritarian leaders and more dependent on the fortunes of mercurial international markets—than at any point in human history. If the first fact has made some parts of the world freer, the second has made the rest of it less so.
