Bernard-Henri Lévy

I can now reply to bunches of messages I would never have answered  (because I’m a bit rude), thanks to my little Blackberry and cabs that get stuck in traffic jams.

When my plane is unfortunate enough to land at JFK five minutes after a jumbo Boeing flight, and I must wait an hour before passing through immigration,  I can now read the Huffington Post or the International Herald Tribune online — avoiding the eyes of customs employees who demand that cell phones be turned off (though I’ve never understood why).

And then there is the “war machine,” my ability to use the Internet to bring to the world  my ideas and those of my colleagues and to spur interest in numerous causes.   My literary and philosophical review, La Règle du Jeu, for instance,  is in the process of becoming an online magazine of ideas in France.  This is where the battle for Polanski was waged and won; this is where the Egyptian Farouk Hosni, the book burner, was methodically defeated in his candidature for the post of Director General of UNESCO; it’s where I have led the fight to spare the life of Sakineh Ashtiani-Mohammadi, the Iranian woman who was convicted of adultery and sentenced to death by stoning.

In my country, I am often credited with having understood very early on  —  30 years ago  —  the ‘‘good use’’ of the media.  Perhaps.  But what I am more proud of is to have caught on to, now, before many others, the marvelous usefulness of the Internet for an intellectual like me, its effectiveness in the battle of ideas, its use  in conserving and permanently perpetuating the traces of a thought.  Internet, the worldwide garbage can? The reign of the instant and the ephemeral?  No, on the contrary, it is the marble for all that is written, the great conserver, and thus the friend of reflection.

So, why should we be frightened by this new force? Do I wish sometimes that I could just shut it all off?  No!  It is my ally, this new force.  And I would do without it today only with great difficulty and regret.