"Its not just a network of computers, it's a network of lives," Luna said to a crowd of about 70 in the Paley Center for Media yesterday "We need to shine the spotlight on the powerful impact of the Internet now."

Techno-utopian Nicholas Negroponte spoke of the net's ability to connect us. "Isolation plus poverty is a deadly cocktail," he said. Indeed. If Chat Roulette has taught us anything, it's that the web is a powerful force for connecting random strangers.

Shirin Ebadi, who won the nobel prize in 2003, spoke about the web's role during the 2009 Iranian elections. "Under those conditions, the internet helped people," said Ebadi. "Each person became a journalist and we saw videos from people's mobiles."

If the Internet won the Nobel Peace Prize, the next step in the initiative for peace would be to get everyone connected. "We need to protect the Internet's freedom and create a bill of rights," Luna said. "That will protect the truths."

No word yet on where the $1.4 million prize will go if the Internet becomes the first non-human to win.

For the extreme Left, he’s the President who is still fighting a war in Iraq, an escalating war in Afghanistan, and possibly thinking about taking out Iran’s nuclear capability. For the extreme Right, he’s a foreign born egomaniac who is getting ready to allow gays to serve in the military and planning to cut and run from all American military engagements. However, it is instructive to read the President’s Nobel Prize citation and see how Obama is being perceived abroad:

“Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama’s initiative, the United States is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.”

“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population,” 

My favorite part of the news stories about the Prize is the way the President was informed of this award. Due to time zone differences, American Nobelists are typically informed of their win in the middle of the night. Not this time.  According to Nobel Committee Chair Thorbjoern Jagland , the Committee decided not to inform Obama early because it didn't want to wake him up. "Waking up a president in the middle of the night, this isn't really something you do,"  Yes, he might think the nation was being attacked.. Deploying  the air force would not be the correct response to winning a peace prize.

Of course, Obama is not the first sitting American President to win the Prize. Teddy Roosevelt won in 1916 and Woodrow Wilson in 1919. The move by the Nobel committee serves to reinforce the central position of American diplomacy and the continued importance of the American Presidency. With Europe, China, India, and Russia emerging as world powers, the United States continues to retain its critical position, with the world’s most powerful military and a huge if struggling economy. Of equal importance is America’s central position in the world’s media, on the web and in the popular imagination. Images of America are communicated throughout the world and continue to dominate the world’s collective bandwith.

It matters what the American President does, how he does it and what he says. When President George W. Bush swaggers on to an aircraft carrier to declare “mission accomplished” it says one thing. When President Barack Obama goes to Cairo to hold out an olive branch to the Muslim world, it says something quite different. While being popular outside the United States may not be the main objective of the American President, Machiavelli aside, being feared and loathed is not always the best way to promote American interests in an interdependent global system.

A number of polls this summer show that the United States is more respected abroad than it was during the Bush Administration and it is clear that the Obama team sees diplomacy as well as the military as tools for advancing American interests. Obama is a masterful communicator and a compelling figure on the world stage. While it is too early to know if all of this promise will translate into performance, the Nobel Committee seems to be betting on our still new President. I admit that I am too. Obama has written his own story and termed it the Audacity of Hope. I think the Nobel committee has added its voice to that story- making the case for the persistence of hope. I think it is a wonderful gesture, worthy of the traditions of this important prize.

Yes, we’re all glad George W. Bush is gone, too, and we all know he never should have been elected. Hell, we’re pretty sure he actually wasn’t elected—at least the first time. And we’re as relieved as you that we now have a president who doesn’t disparage “Old Europe,” launch needless wars, and talk about the importance of “good relations with the Grecians.”

But, see, the thing is, this Nobel stuff doesn’t help Obama at all. And actually, it makes things a lot worse for him here in America.

The problem is that the caricature Obama’s opponents on the right have been pushing for more than a year—that he’s a rhetorically gifted charmer who inspires worshipful adoration from college kids and the French but who doesn’t actually know how to accomplish things—is starting to bleed over into the mainstream.

He’s been president for almost nine months, nearly 20 percent of his first term, and the unemployment rate is about to crash 10 percent, health care reform has been reduced to a confusing mess, the war in Afghanistan he promised to turn around is spinning out of control, and that aggressive first-term Middle East push is yielding pretty much nothing. Also, he lost the Olympics!

We know, we know: This isn’t really fair. He did pass a stimulus plan, and it would have done a lot more if a single Republican had cooperated. And as ugly as the health care debate has been, no president has ever pushed reform this far through the Congressional process. And who knows? Maybe he’ll get Afghanistan and the Middle East right when all is said and done.

But fair isn’t what matters when it comes to domestic politics. When Americans elect a new leader, they don’t want end zone celebrations until they see some touchdowns. And when they look at Obama’s record right now, they don’t even see a field goal. (Hopefully these American football references aren’t confusing you!)

So when they see that Obama is going to receive the Nobel Peace Prize even though he may soon send tens of thousands of fresh troops to a war that’s probably unwinnable, well, it makes it a lot easier for them to buy into what the right’s been saying—that gullible Americans and socialist Europeans have been seduced by a fantasy.

The early reaction to your Nobel decision here in America is revealing: Even Obama’s own supporters don’t feel too good about this. One of them, a rather liberal friend of ours, just wrote on her Facebook page: “I now have every hope of winning the Nobel Peace Prize. I'm a great speech writer and I'm full of good intentions.”

This is exactly what the right has been trying to get Americans to say and think for a year. You mean well, Norway, we know. But in one fell swoop, you’ve just advanced their cause immeasurably. Some are even wondering: Can Obama get away with turning this down?

You waited 21 years after Carter left office to honor him. Couldn’t you wait until Obama did something besides preside over a Security Council meeting?

Perhaps Uma Thurman and Kevin Spacey can help answer that question. After all, the two actors co-hosted the performance, which itself is meant to draw attention to what the former vice president calls a “planetary emergency.” Speaking at a press conference today, Ms. Thurman, 37, said, “The whole point is to raise awareness and communicate with everyone else in the world and share our concern for the planet.” She went on, “What we are hearing is that everyone needs to get very much involved with climate. It's coming to us. It's coming to a theater near us, very, very near us.” And Mr. Spacey, the cagey actor who currently oversees artistic affairs at London’s Old Vic theater, brought up an eco-friendly project that his playhouse is working on, called “Go for Green.” According to the 48-year-old thespian, the effort will culminate in a play that means to better educate young audiences on problems facing the environment. “I think that showing up at an event like this is important because there are going to be so many young people tuning in to this concert,” he said.