Steve Gillmor talks about disruptive technologies that were significant in 2003 and in particular whether the trend is toward more or less freedom.

About the terrific upsurge in blogging, he says:

In turn, blogs have nurtured a growing circle of trust, the mulch for building directories of digital identity based on expertise, communication skills, and critical intangibles -- sense of humor, ethical infrastructure, shared values, and contributed resources. Weblogs provide a variety of Web services for the community: a kind of protective gauze for standards warriors, viral marketing for independent developers, and a watchdog mechanism for legacy media.

On the positive side, he identifies such disruptive technologists as Tim O'Reilly who has donated 200 book titles to the Creative Commons licensing model, Dave Winer, who has contributed the development of SOAP and ongoing analysis via Scripting News, and Bill Gates who has promoted TCP/IP, XML, and Wi-Fi.