Le Web 3: Free net opens borders for former Israeli PM

Online media can help unite people of different nationalities despite the continued outmoded thinking of their governments, according to Israeli vice premier Shimon Peres.

"Young people think the world is a mess," he told the Le Web 3 conference in Paris today. "In my judgement, the world is not in a mess - the world is pregnant with a new age and what we are seing is a transition; the stone age is over.

"My impression is the young people will stop reading papers or watching television because they can do it with the internet in five minutes," he conceded. "[But] the internet is free of prejudices; it's open, it's free.

"The most important branch of the previous economy was cutivating the land, that forced us ... to put in frontiers. The minute that science and technology took over the future of our life and became the source of our wealth - why do you need borders?

"The internet has revolutionised. Let's change our efforts from traditional memory to intellectual imagination, that will enrich our life."

Asked about the state of the blogosphere, which latest statistics indicate numbers 60 million blogs, Mr Peres, who was previously twice prime minister of Israel, said: "Why not 6 billion?"

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