NATO has recently announced (see: http://www.nato.int/cps/…) that, similarly to what the Pentagon was already doing, the Internet will be considered as a real operational theater, similarly to the sky, sea and land, creating ad hoc forces.
Little by little we are realizing that the Internet is not just a set of technological protocols, but is something very similar to a territory, a place, however digital.
Unfortunately, politics, with some fortunate exceptions, seems unaware of it. And so the online services that public institutions offer to us citizens are few and often poorly developed. Just think of how much any Italian Ministry invests in an office open to the public (which in almost all cases serves a few tens of thousands of users a year) and how much for its online services (theoretically usable by millions of users a month ).
Another example is closer to me: for over two decades I have been working on a digital library that can be used free of charge via the Internet. I cannot fail to notice that initiatives similar to ours are scarce. Why isn't there an archive of public domain assets?
In short, why can't we develop a strategy that treats the Internet for what it is: a virtually boundless territory (including Italy), very rich in opportunities?
