Big Democracies at the Crossroads

• In a balloting year filled with surprises from India and Venezuela, and with Americans battered by the Bush-Kerry race, what do Russia and Indonesia tell us about the future character of democracy as a globally expanding project?

Global Village Versus Faith Tensions

• In the two-plus years since September 11th self-examination within home countries is leading us toward a keener understanding of cross-societal discord and cultural and religious tensions within the global village

From the World Summit on the Information Society, where the global and the local are wired and admired, to the mechanisms behind “Fahrenheit 911,” where they team up against the Bush Administration, WorldPaper editor Peter Orne explores the emerging fabric of our shared human perspective. By pairing the global and the local with the national and the personal, he introduces a more perfect union of inquiry into a world caught in the throes of globalization and confronting a loss of communal meaning and values

Warmth and worldliness: Samoan delegates to the World Summit for the information Society in Geneva. Global triangulation: A documentary uses the personal and the local to defy a wayward national administration

Can what's local save us? Old bedrock for a global age • Can the local think? • Global and local valences • Think locally, act globally • Through the looking glass Global, local, national, personal: Four ways we can all relate • Four shared perspectives • The long national march • Consummating personal and global • Dot matrix you Special Feature: Wireless Grand Challenge Connectivity model for the developing world builds on NSF Net’s success • NSFNet • Wireless technologies