Last year was the first time I'd been to the Edinburgh book festival as an author rather than a punter. I'd been the year before when the MP Chris Mullin was promoting the first volume of his diaries. I met him afterward and he was thoroughly charming but it was still a thrill to be back the following year as an author with my own book, The Silent State, which exposed some of the greater hypocrisies of British democracy in action.
I love the theme of revolution at this year's Edinburgh festival. The organisers were certainly very prescient to realise revolution would be the defining theme of the past year with protestors toppling Arab dictators but also western governments increasingly looking to find ways of controlling the internet.
As such, Edinburgh is the ideal place to launch my latest book, The Revolution Will Be Digitised, which examines how the internet is transforming politics around the world.
As one of the characters in my book (the Icelandic MP Birgitta Jonsdottir) states:
"The 21st century will be the century of the common people. The century of you, of us."
Heather Brooke is due at the book festival on 29 August to discuss web campaigning in the ScottishPower Studio Theatre at 3.30pm and the future of the internet at 7pm in the Spiegeltent.
