He was the first person to use the internet to subvert the old order.
Yet that does not mean the power of the internet to subvert the existing order has entirely disappeared; indeed, as French author Renaud de Spens argues, it is still promoting values inimical to China's one-party dictatorship – ideas of choice, competition and customer service.
Russia's United Nations ambassador, Vitaly I. Churkin, angrily denied what he called poisonous, unsourced reports on the Internet aimed at subverting Russia's relationship with Arab countries in the aftermath of the Security Council veto.
On climate change, it indicates that a vigorous attempt by internet cranks to subvert science has met something of a brick wall, unless the next government turns out to be a coalition of Ukip and the BNP.
It has been said many times of the Internet that it radically subverts the traditional relationship between high and low, in terms both of culture and class.
After all, Northern California has great activities, too, but we don't let them subvert the Internet revolution.
That would go a long way towards stopping the internet being used to subvert the courts in the UK and other countries.
The common thread among these stories is that the NSA is subverting the internet and turning it into a massive surveillance tool.
By subverting the internet at every level to make it a vast, multi-layered and robust surveillance platform, the NSA has undermined a fundamental social contract.
Elsewhere in the Guardian, the renowned security expert Bruce Schneier has written a firebreathing column castigating Western spy agencies for "subverting the internet" and transforming it into "a vast, multi-layered and robust surveillance platform".
