oicing his opposition to the war.
This daily journal of high aspirations for peace and a better life in
Baghdad became one of the most read sources of information and opinion
about the war on the web.

Clearly, the success of sites like Dear Raed stem from our
increasingly complex society's need for a multiplicity of points of
view on our most pressing issues, particularly when confronted by a
mainstream mediaspace that appears to be converging on single,
corporate and government approved agenda. These alternative
information sources are being given more attention and credence than
they might actually deserve, but this is only because they are the
only ready source of oppositional, or even independent thinking
available. Those who choose to compose and disseminate alternative
value systems may be working against the current and increasingly
concretised mythologies of market, church and state, but they
ultimately hold the keys to the rebirth of all three institutions in
an entirely new context.

The communications revolution may not have brought with it either
salvation for the world's stock exchanges or the technological
infrastructure for a new global resource distribution system. Though
one possible direction for the implementation of new media technology
may be exhausted, its other myriad potentials beckon us once again.
While it may not provide us with a template for sure-fire business and
marketing solutions, the rise of interactive media does provide us
with the beginnings of new metaphors for cooperation, new faith in the
power of networked activity and new evidence of our ability to
participate actively in the authorship of our collective destiny.

Chapter 1

From Moses to modems: demystifying the storytelling and taking control

We are living in a world of stories. We can't help but use narratives
to understand the events that occur around us. The unpredictability of
nature, emotions, social interactions and power relationships led
human beings from prehistoric times to develop narratives that
described the patterns underlying the movements of these forces.
Although we like to believe that primitive people actually believed
the myths they created about everything, from the weather to the
afterlife, a growing camp of religious historians are concluding that
early religions were understood much more metaphorically than we
understand religion today. As Karen Armstrong explains in A History of
God1, and c