How can user end devices and networking change the world?

How can we use computers as a catalyst for positive social and political change? How can we use computers to help us address the marginalization and silencing of individuals because of race, age, gender, handicap? How can we use computers to promote increasingly egalitarian exchanges among groups of people who have different levels of privilege and power? How can we use computers to promote both collaborative activities and to support dissent in its most productive forms? Hard questions derived from research on a seemingly unrelated topic, computer assisted writing)