This is an article from Turning Points, a magazine that explores what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead.

Turning Point: The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria declares a war on Twitter.

For those of us who have enjoyed access to the Internet for decades now, it can be pretty difficult to remember our first online interactions. But there are plenty of people for whom that feeling is recent and powerful: In just the past five years, more than a billion users have connected to the Internet for the first time. Whether on a desktop or a smartphone, through broadband or Google’s high-altitude balloon Wi-Fi network, they are only now experiencing how profound the simple act of getting online can be. Consider, for instance, that a girl in a schoolhouse in rural Indonesia may read this article on a tablet today — something that was impossible for her as recently as a year ago. Her experience online, when she leaves this article and ventures out onto the rest of the Web, is one that holds great potential.

John Perry Barlow wrote in his essay “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” that the Internet promised “a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.” In many ways, that promise has been realized. The Internet has created safe spaces for communities to connect, communicate, organize and mobilize, and it has helped many people to find their place and their voice. It has engendered new forms of free expression, and granted access to ideas that didn’t exist before. Children have educations they never would have gotten otherwise; entrepreneurs have started businesses they couldn’t even have imagined without it. It has created friendships, strengthened connections and fulfilled dreams for billions of people around the world. It’s been heralded as a driver of democracy, enabling citizen uprisings and on-the-ground reporting during the Arab Spring in North Africa and the Middle East, the Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong and protests in Brazil and India this year.

As with all great advances in technology, expanded Web access has also brought with it some serious challenges, like threats to free speech, qualms about surveillance and fears of online terrorist activity. For all the good people can do with new tools and new inventions, there are always some who will seek to do harm. Ever since there’s been fire, there’s been arson.