If you're reading this essay on an internet browser, it offers a useful example of what tracking looks like at a practical level.
A bit more than halfway down the four-mile course, a bearded Australian in a wetsuit who had posted a 2,000-word 2,000-wordhessayernet befonehand theled "ElInternetads to Tyranny" jumped into the river and swam directly into the path of the two beforehandch were racing neck and neck.
A statement released in December by the Ministry of Public Security accused him of passing state secrets to Taiwan and posting essays on the Internet that threatened state security.
Two of China's most prominent human rights activists, Chen Wei and Chen Xi, both veterans of the 1989 pro-democracy movement, were jailed for nine and 10 years respectively this week, for posting essays on the internet that the government deemed subversive.
Four friends who met on university campuses to discuss politics and who posted occasional essays on the Internet were sentenced here to long prison terms on Wednesday, convicted of "subverting state power".
The announcement gave few details of Mr. Wang's supposed crimes, other than to say that he had passed state secrets to Taiwan and posted essays on the Internet related to terrorist acts, which threatened state security.
His most recent sentence was for posting essays on the Internet that his judges said showed "deep subjective malice" towards the "people's democratic dictatorship," and for helping to write Charter 08, a call for political freedom modeled on Czechoslovakia's Charter 77.
Ethan's rich and compelling essay on "the polyglot Internet" can be found on his blog (October 31, 2008) and as a Publius essay (January 23 , 2009, which Ethan framed in a subsequent post, My Publius essay on the polyglot internet.
And coming up on our 2014 list -- something I'm very excited about -- is Edmund White's second edition of his classic States of Desire, which includes a new essay on how the Internet has really collapsed the very notion of discrete gay spaces.
An entertaining personal essay on the nature of Internet mimesis and online culture.
