Mukul Devichand

Here is a romantic idea: imagine an internet where there is no text, no pictures, nothing to click on, only sound. Where the barriers of language disappear and ordinary people – including those without English literacy, speaking Hindi or any Indian dialect into their mobile phones – can simply use their voices to unlock trustworthy information. This is the idea of the “spoken web,” and it has long had a particular appeal in India.

“You will be watching the birth of a new art.” With these words, the BBC’s Deputy Director General explained to the public that it was entering a nascent, uncertain, even frightening technological frontier. The corporation had decided to launch services for an exciting new platform that threatened to disrupt the medium of radio forever. They’d done this, despite the fact that only 20,000 households had the relevant devices to access these services.

Women fighting India's "rape culture" have used the internet in highly creative ways - but is posting rape videos onto YouTube a step too far? "I watched the video and to my utter shock, it was an untampered video of rape." This is how Sunitha Krishnan, founder of anti-sex trafficking charity Prajwala, describes watching the first WhatsApp rape video she discovered back in February. "It was absolutely nauseating and I just couldn't continue.