New technologies are giving citizens more information about their governments than ever before, and they hold the potential to create even more transparency. But the same solutions do not necessarily apply across the board, and one challenge is finding the right remedy for individual situations.

The contrasts between the creativity that democracy can bring and the stifling of imagination in closed societies like North Korea was the topic of an evening at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre in Washington, D.C., Nov. 14 organized by the theatre and NDI.

In the decade since the founding of the Community of Democracies, which met June 2-4 in Poland, a major change has been the explosion of technology and the tools it has created, both for those supporting the free flow of ideas and other democratic values and for authoritarian states interested in the opposite, curtailing information and suppressing human rights.