DCF makes some excellent points about the difficulty of *overt* thought control in a information society. however I would like to suggest that in our own democratic culture, *overt* thought control is not really that important and is not necessarily the major means of thought control. the most insidious, and effective, form of thought control is that which manipulates subject's thinking without their being aware of it. there are a variety of ways to accomplish this, many of them outlined in a book called "Coercive Persuasion" loaned to me be an acquaintance. one way is to try to infiltrate groups with particular individuals who are loyal to the "thought control" agenda, who then attempt to gain the trust of members, but then also try to subtly manipulate their thinking. the problem that "covert thought control" becomes more possible with an information age that does not handle identity in any "permanent" or "enduring" way. agent provocateurs etc. may be more difficult to identify and easier to create and maintain. in fact a single "government thought control agent" might be able to create and maintain dozens of convincing identities, all of them working to subtly manipulate the population's thinking without detection. in the real world, once a "person" is discredited, all that they do is tainted, but when a "tentacle" is "tainted" in cyberspace, the "operator" need only create a new "tentacle"-- an operation that is becoming increasingly cheap. so in other words I would say that cyberspace raises some problems while solving others, and that its full implications are not yet apparent. I suspect we are simply going to run into new, more sophisticated forms of thought control, not the total dissolution of its capability, in cyberspace. old forms of trying to kill thoughts based on the physical medium, such as bashing printing presses, will dissolve, but other forms of "meme damage" such as "flooding attacks" etc. may arise instead.