For Lanier, with all of his musings on the present-day homogenizing of young people's social lives through Twitter and Facebook (and I agree with him, for he's so obviously correct about that), seems to desperately want to be an optimist in a world where -- if you accept any, most, or all of his premises -- there is no reason to be such.

ENGADGET: Book Review: You Are Not a Gadget Alt

And Wang Kejin is an optimist - he believes the government will be forced to allow more freedom of expression as the influence of the new technology becomes unstoppable.

BBC: China diary: Beijing air and Weibo warriors

Therefore, you might suppose that to be a professional tech investor--one who bets huge in up markets and coolly bails out at the start of down markets--well, such a superman must be more than an optimist and futurist.

FORBES: Tech Stocks at a Crossroads