I have become convinced over the years that Tetris is the last vestige of the Cold War -- a Communist plot to deprive the West of work-hours. Unfortunately for the Soviets, this evil meme weapon was deployed too early -- had they waited until the Internet was everywhere and nearly every American worker had a computer on their desk, this simple, insidious weapon would have brought our economy to a grinding halt. Then, those crafty Commies would have waltzed in a la "Red Dawn" and done a number on the place, leaving only confused high schoolers to defend us. Viva Charlie Sheen y Jennifer Grey!
Fortunately, this simple, all-consuming meme has faded with time and been replaced with other workplace-inhibiting memes such as Flash games, e-mail flirting, and frivolous use of Napster. The Communist threat/meme truly is no more.
Someone mentioned that the lawsuit filed by Metallica would be going after Napster, and anyone who downloaded any of their music (time for me to microwave some CD-Rs). Does this seem like scare tactics to anyone? How in the name of God is Metallica going to:
Prove that the users that initiated downloads of their music are still in possesion of the files? Are they going to seize every computer that has downloaded a Metallica song via Napster? Not friggin' likely.
And on the assumption that Metallica did somehow manage to win this lawsuit, how are they going to collect damages/punish people? Dock my tax return? Round us up and stick us in "re-education camps"? Again, not friggin' likely.
What this is going to boil down to, in all likelihood, is that either Metallica will win, and everyone will be slapped lightly on the wrist, and Napster will be shut down. Or, what's more likely, is that Metallica will lose the lawsuit, and start pressuring the ISPs, which will ban Napster for fear of having the crap sued out of them.
All in all, what is likely, is a mass-migration to Gnutella. Why? There are certain ports that ISPs are unlikely to ban -- FTP, Telnet, POP, WWW, Quake 2, Starcraft, etc. -- which would cripple their services. My understanding of Gnutella is that it uses the same protocol as WWW, and can be configured to run on any port. (I should code up a Mac port of it, now that I think about it.) How the hell can you stop that? If you're running a Gnutella servient (hybrid server-client), on the WWW port, it's going to look just like web traffic. No web = no Internet, at least as far as the everyday consumer is concerned.
Furthermore, with all the various methods for tunnelling through firewalls, etc., it begins to look more and more likely that distributed storage and distribution is going to continue unabated.
The corporatocracy under the guise of the "law" can metaphorically blow up as many bridges as it wants to -- we can keep building new ones.
The first and foremost thing to consider is that nanotech will totally redefine the meaning material wealth. Given that advanced nanotech will allow you to make highly-accurate (I will not say "perfect" because inevitably someone will get nit-picky about semantics) copies of already-existing objects in minimal amounts of time (assuming self-replicating assemblers). What is the value of a starship when you can build it out of materials found in everyday dirt? What is the value of the Mona Lisa if everyone owns a copy that is so precise that the original is indistinguishable? The value is tied to the raw materials. As a result of the devaluation of manufactured objects, personal effects become much more disposable. Need new shoes? Break down the old pair and rebuild them from scratch. New a new car? Throw a ton of aluminum soda cans, the remains of a 1991 Honda Civic, and some old GI Joes, and voila. New car. While this will play havoc with the economy, it may or may not destroy a cash-based system. It is easy to see where an open-source nanotech system would allow anyone with the basic assemblers to build more advanced ones and bootstrap themselves into a full-scale nanoforge. However, for the first few decades, that seems to be pretty unlikely. Nanotech will probably be treated like nuclear weapons -- very tightly controlled. Nanotech is going to change everything. It will not allow conversion of lead to gold, or radioactive materials into lead (as some other poster hinted at), but it will radically change the way life is conducted. That asteroid belt will start looking a lot more useful.
Bill has said that Microsoft has fostered a competitive marketplace. I disagree, but I see how he could come to that conclusion.
Home computers first got big in the early 80's -- and Apple, though most of us look down our noses at them, was the most visible of the companies at the time. However, in the late 80's and early 90's when Windows was starting to crop up, prices on computers were dropping, and a majority of those machines were Wintel.
Now, from Bill's point of view, this probably looks like, "Windows started everyone buying computers, therefore, Microsoft has been a good force for the marketplace." But what's important to realize is that at that point in time, the home computer was an idea whose time had come, and regardless of the operating system, home computers were going to make inroads into our culture.
You can look at this from the viewpoint of another technology -- VCRs. The earliest models were clunky, huge, and horrifically expensive. By the early- to mid-80's prices had come down and features had improved substantially, and this brought about a surge in the purchasing of VCRs.
Basically, the market was ready for powerful, inexpensive computers, and Windows was in the right place at the right time. For Bill Gates to claim that his company made it happen is ludicrous.
In regards to the hit the Nasdaq took today on Microsoft's hit, there are a few important things to remember:
Microsoft took a hit after the initial trial concluded. It didn't send the Nasdaq into a permanent nosedive.
Tech stocks are still viewed as a solid investment, both for short- and long-term gains. If anything, the depressed price of tech stocks will probably trigger a new wave of buying, thereby driving prices back up.
The joy of the market economy is that it is purely arbitrary. The hit the Nasdaq took today will probably recover in the next couple of weeks. Why? Because people will realize that the Internet isn't going to break and crumble without Microsoft, and with the government putting the smackdown on the company, that will give all these other tech stocks plenty of room to safely grow, and maybe become the NextBigThing. In a couple of days, this will be clear to JoeAverage and he'll fire up the ol' eTrade account and start buying tech stocks again.
Did Microsoft foster a healthy, competitive environment for software development companies? No. But it will once it is broken up and set aside, and this will be good for the consumer and for the Nasdaq.
Well, what he should have said was that it had never been done before on the big screen.
Phantom Menace was far from robbed. It relied on special effects to carry a weak plot with poor character development.
The Matrix, OTOH, merged its visual effects with its theme quite nicely. We've all seen the 3D freeze-frame pan around an object in the Gap commercials and the occasional QuicktimeVR...it's obviously computer-generated, similar to the world they were in, which merely strengthened the movie. Had these effects been cut, I suspect that the movie would have fallen flat on its face.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a Star Wars fan, but Episode One blew dead Jawas.
And if you're more of a hardware buff, there's the NASA Image Exchange. Searchable index, and if you waffle with the URL, you can force it into giving you the large copies of the image, suitable for use as desktop pictures.
I've been using Yahoo! Bill Pay for about two months now, and I love it. What used to delay my bills -- not wanting to spend time writing the damn things out -- is no longer an excuse. It takes about five minutes for me to log in and schedule a group of payments.
If a payee can recieve direct funds transfer, Yahoo! will apparently wire the money straight from your account to the recipient. Otherwise, they print a check for you and mail it to your creditor.
When combined with a web-based interface to your bank accounts, the power/usability of these systems are great.
To answer questions re: looking for smaller planets -- NASA has plans to launch the Planet Finder Array -- a cluster of telescopes designed to do optical inferometry -- in about 2005. It will go into an orbit around the sun at roughly the same distance as Jupiter, and be capable of seeing Earth-sized planets out to about 50 light-years. Further, plans call for the ability to analyze the spectrum of the planet, which will allow for atmospheric analysis.
A recent issue of Discover magazine had a "field guide" to all the new extra-solar planets that we've found up to now. 47 Ursa Majoris has a Jupiter-sized planet that orbits its star at about the same distance Mars is from ours... Given that 47Uma is a little brighter and a little larger, this planet could very well have habitable moons, and is actually one of the targets for a new radio search, so the science already has applications.
As for the Hubble issue, I suspect it will be handled like Mir and kept aloft for at least five years beyond its expected life. There are plans for a "Hubble II" that uses a segmented mirror like the Keck. (And whomever asked about the X-Ray observatory: no, it cannot take over Hubble's duties -- it is without optical capabilities.)
As someone who graduated in the last two years, I can definitely say that the most important knowledge you gain in higher education is social. As a "geek" in high school and middle school, I was extremely well-read, and as a result, in college, there were very few classes in which I learned something *new*.
Perhaps a way to deal with the lack of socialization inherent in a virtual campus, we can force all of the students to use IRC for an hour every night. Okay, kidding. A real solution would be to allow students who have been out of high school for at least two years -- whether living in their parents' basement and slinging burgers for a paycheck, in the Army for however much time, or in a meatspace college. This would give the individual time to develop socially, away from the clique-ridden environment that is secondary education in America.
I suspect that the university itself will not be free, but rather tuition-free. There are always associated costs with education -- books, notebooks, etc. Granted, things like notebooks are irrelavent when you have pico or BBEdit, but there are still going to be things that need to be read on paper because they don't exist in electronic editions yet.
As for cheating -- this could be tough to monitor, and I agree that it could cause a problem with people flooding the market with no actual credentials. However, cheating already goes on in normal universities, and it should be dealt with by giving the student a failing grade in the particular class, and eventually lead to permanent expulsion should it be a chronic problem.
All in all, though, I think this is an incredibly good idea. I'll be enrolling.
First off, nothing in science is "foregone conclusion."
Next, let's cover your polar cap statements. The south pole of Mars is covered with frozen carbon dioxide, and not water ice. Your statement does apply to the north polar cap, I believe. (I seem to recall reading material to that effect.)
Lastly, what would Mars's proximity to the asteroid belt have to do with the presence of water? Nothing. Maybe you're thinking of the Kuiper Belt, which out beyond either Neptune or Uranaus.
Perhaps what they should consider doing is open-sourcing Napster and making the server software available as well. Then you end up with a more decentralized structure similar to IRC or USENET, and less of a target to hit. It also seems to me that the trick that Hotline Server admins use ("click on my porn and casino banners to get the site login and password") would be pointless, because users would flock to the free servers, making them the ones with the most variety, and therefore, the most attractive. Again does anyone know if there's a published RFC of the Napster protocol? If so, please drop me an email at dan.NOSPAM.bailey@NOSPAM.mindwired.com! Thanks!
I guess this prevents things like http://mars.nasa.gov, once they get their Internet-enabled probes up there. Some idiot would probably sue on the grounds that US gov't was laying claim to the planet in violation of the Outer Space Treaty. Of course, if you want to get rich, file the lawsuit based upon the American flags planted all over the moon..Mars NOW!
Of course information has a predator -- it's called entropy. Which increases with time.
Duh.
Furthermore, ever head of signal-to-noise ratio? In the case of information, you can argue that the noise (JonKatz, "My Cat Fluffy" pages, banner ads, etc.) is what interferes with the signal (intelligent websites, etc.). To try and build an analogy of predator-prey ecology around signal-to-noise is bunk.
Predator-prey is something that applies to finite-but-expanding systems. In the case of information, you could argue that it is an expanding-but-infinite system. (This goes into the arguments put forth by Wittgenstein's Tractatus on language and language creation -- each linguistic construct being completely unique.) Anything you say, write, etc., has a basic uniqueness about it -- chances are, no one is ever going to write the same thing the exact same way. The basic theme may be similar, but the overall presentation will differ radically.
Where noise comes into the Web is when you have similar information about the same subject, or pages that draw you with the promise of certain information and then present something entirely different. (Like font sites with the phrase "sexy blondes" in their META tags.)
Jon == noise.
----------------------------------------
Yo soy El Fontosaurus Grande!
While not wanting to dredge up Stephenson again, I'd have to go with the "franchise model" (for lack of a better term).
What you'll see is something akin to "user groups", where all of them are in different geographic locations, but united for the same general reason.
You would probably see an interaction model similar to that of the Greek system in colleges where fraternities will come to the aid of travelling 'brothers' from other geographical areas.
In fact, given that a majority of the Greek organizations have a solid web presence, but are tied together primarily in meatspace, you could argue that they are rudimentary HCs.
HCs, like frathouses, benefit by a sharing of resources -- everyone gets a place to live, there's always some food to eat, a supply of labor for whatever project comes up, etc. In college, situations like these develop from a lack of resources (money, intelligence, whatever) -- and what the individual frat members couldn't do before (think, make friends, party, study, cheat) on their own, they can now do, thanks to a grouping of resources. What I think you'll see happening is as the resources of various geographic locales become more and more scarce, you'll see a turn toward HCs -- where small clusters of people with similar ideologies pool their limited resources to a.) survive and b.) advance those ideologies.
Nation-states, such as the United States, will inevitably be unable to stay united due to the large number of people with differing ideologies. (Then again, I could be wrong...it's worked for 225 years so far.) It just seems to me that the ideal human social group numbers between 15 to 25. Beyond that, what's the point? You'll have major dissidents.
Ugh. Sociology. And me on a caffeine-bonk and not thinking clearly.
----------------------------------------
Yo soy El Fontosaurus Grande!
VCs are likely to be supplanted by Hybrid Communities, IMHO. HCs being a situation where you have a local cluster of people that are living in a compact area that combine their resources both in cyberspace and meatspace.
I would assume that HCs will crystallize around people with similar interests/goals, etc. The VC aspect of it will be in interconnecting the meatspace communties around the world that have similar interests.
For those that have read Snow Crash, this may sound like the concept of the FOQNE (Franchise-Owned Quasi-National Entity), and truth be told, it's probably pretty close.
I don't say this because of any particular loyalty to Neal Stephenson's views, however. It just seems to me that cyberspace, no matter how good it gets, can ever supplant meatspace. People need facetime, plain and simple.
Does this imply an end to the nation-state, as implied in Snow Crash? Certainly not. What this causes is a recurrence of the in-touch neighborhood, which is something America has been lacking since the 60's. A place where you know, and can trust your neighbors.
Nation-states are still going to be necessary to regulate commerce, infrastructure (including all those lovely bandwidth-carrying trunks), and manage things like defense and disaster relief.
Then again, maybe not. Predicting the future is a dicey proposition at best.
----------------------------------------
Yo soy El Fontosaurus Grande!
Slashdot Mirror
I have become convinced over the years that Tetris is the last vestige of the Cold War -- a Communist plot to deprive the West of work-hours. Unfortunately for the Soviets, this evil meme weapon was deployed too early -- had they waited until the Internet was everywhere and nearly every American worker had a computer on their desk, this simple, insidious weapon would have brought our economy to a grinding halt. Then, those crafty Commies would have waltzed in a la "Red Dawn" and done a number on the place, leaving only confused high schoolers to defend us. Viva Charlie Sheen y Jennifer Grey!
Fortunately, this simple, all-consuming meme has faded with time and been replaced with other workplace-inhibiting memes such as Flash games, e-mail flirting, and frivolous use of Napster. The Communist threat/meme truly is no more.
Someone mentioned that the lawsuit filed by Metallica would be going after Napster, and anyone who downloaded any of their music (time for me to microwave some CD-Rs). Does this seem like scare tactics to anyone? How in the name of God is Metallica going to:
Prove that the users that initiated downloads of their music are still in possesion of the files? Are they going to seize every computer that has downloaded a Metallica song via Napster? Not friggin' likely.
And on the assumption that Metallica did somehow manage to win this lawsuit, how are they going to collect damages/punish people? Dock my tax return? Round us up and stick us in "re-education camps"? Again, not friggin' likely.
What this is going to boil down to, in all likelihood, is that either Metallica will win, and everyone will be slapped lightly on the wrist, and Napster will be shut down. Or, what's more likely, is that Metallica will lose the lawsuit, and start pressuring the ISPs, which will ban Napster for fear of having the crap sued out of them.
All in all, what is likely, is a mass-migration to Gnutella. Why? There are certain ports that ISPs are unlikely to ban -- FTP, Telnet, POP, WWW, Quake 2, Starcraft, etc. -- which would cripple their services. My understanding of Gnutella is that it uses the same protocol as WWW, and can be configured to run on any port. (I should code up a Mac port of it, now that I think about it.) How the hell can you stop that? If you're running a Gnutella servient (hybrid server-client), on the WWW port, it's going to look just like web traffic. No web = no Internet, at least as far as the everyday consumer is concerned.
Furthermore, with all the various methods for tunnelling through firewalls, etc., it begins to look more and more likely that distributed storage and distribution is going to continue unabated.
The corporatocracy under the guise of the "law" can metaphorically blow up as many bridges as it wants to -- we can keep building new ones.
The first and foremost thing to consider is that nanotech will totally redefine the meaning material wealth. Given that advanced nanotech will allow you to make highly-accurate (I will not say "perfect" because inevitably someone will get nit-picky about semantics) copies of already-existing objects in minimal amounts of time (assuming self-replicating assemblers). What is the value of a starship when you can build it out of materials found in everyday dirt? What is the value of the Mona Lisa if everyone owns a copy that is so precise that the original is indistinguishable? The value is tied to the raw materials. As a result of the devaluation of manufactured objects, personal effects become much more disposable. Need new shoes? Break down the old pair and rebuild them from scratch. New a new car? Throw a ton of aluminum soda cans, the remains of a 1991 Honda Civic, and some old GI Joes, and voila. New car. While this will play havoc with the economy, it may or may not destroy a cash-based system. It is easy to see where an open-source nanotech system would allow anyone with the basic assemblers to build more advanced ones and bootstrap themselves into a full-scale nanoforge. However, for the first few decades, that seems to be pretty unlikely. Nanotech will probably be treated like nuclear weapons -- very tightly controlled. Nanotech is going to change everything. It will not allow conversion of lead to gold, or radioactive materials into lead (as some other poster hinted at), but it will radically change the way life is conducted. That asteroid belt will start looking a lot more useful.
Bill has said that Microsoft has fostered a competitive marketplace. I disagree, but I see how he could come to that conclusion.
Home computers first got big in the early 80's -- and Apple, though most of us look down our noses at them, was the most visible of the companies at the time. However, in the late 80's and early 90's when Windows was starting to crop up, prices on computers were dropping, and a majority of those machines were Wintel.
Now, from Bill's point of view, this probably looks like, "Windows started everyone buying computers, therefore, Microsoft has been a good force for the marketplace." But what's important to realize is that at that point in time, the home computer was an idea whose time had come, and regardless of the operating system, home computers were going to make inroads into our culture.
You can look at this from the viewpoint of another technology -- VCRs. The earliest models were clunky, huge, and horrifically expensive. By the early- to mid-80's prices had come down and features had improved substantially, and this brought about a surge in the purchasing of VCRs.
Basically, the market was ready for powerful, inexpensive computers, and Windows was in the right place at the right time. For Bill Gates to claim that his company made it happen is ludicrous.
In regards to the hit the Nasdaq took today on Microsoft's hit, there are a few important things to remember:
The joy of the market economy is that it is purely arbitrary. The hit the Nasdaq took today will probably recover in the next couple of weeks. Why? Because people will realize that the Internet isn't going to break and crumble without Microsoft, and with the government putting the smackdown on the company, that will give all these other tech stocks plenty of room to safely grow, and maybe become the NextBigThing. In a couple of days, this will be clear to JoeAverage and he'll fire up the ol' eTrade account and start buying tech stocks again.
Did Microsoft foster a healthy, competitive environment for software development companies? No. But it will once it is broken up and set aside, and this will be good for the consumer and for the Nasdaq.
Anyone know enough about the internal workings of ENIGMA to code up an emulator? (Specifically, an open source emulator...)
No particular reason, of course, given that ENIGMA's functionality is well-known. It would just be fun to play around with.
Your sock options are going? Better avoid sandals -- they look goofy with socks.
Well, what he should have said was that it had never been done before on the big screen.
Phantom Menace was far from robbed. It relied on special effects to carry a weak plot with poor character development.
The Matrix, OTOH, merged its visual effects with its theme quite nicely. We've all seen the 3D freeze-frame pan around an object in the Gap commercials and the occasional QuicktimeVR...it's obviously computer-generated, similar to the world they were in, which merely strengthened the movie. Had these effects been cut, I suspect that the movie would have fallen flat on its face.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a Star Wars fan, but Episode One blew dead Jawas.
The number of qubits will double and the cost will halve every fifteen minutes.
Good god, I just read an article (Wired?) that was raving that they managed to entangle 4-qubit systems.
Welcome to the new reality.
And if you're more of a hardware buff, there's the NASA Image Exchange. Searchable index, and if you waffle with the URL, you can force it into giving you the large copies of the image, suitable for use as desktop pictures.
I've been using Yahoo! Bill Pay for about two months now, and I love it. What used to delay my bills -- not wanting to spend time writing the damn things out -- is no longer an excuse. It takes about five minutes for me to log in and schedule a group of payments.
If a payee can recieve direct funds transfer, Yahoo! will apparently wire the money straight from your account to the recipient. Otherwise, they print a check for you and mail it to your creditor.
When combined with a web-based interface to your bank accounts, the power/usability of these systems are great.
Thus far, I have no complaints.
To answer questions re: looking for smaller planets -- NASA has plans to launch the Planet Finder Array -- a cluster of telescopes designed to do optical inferometry -- in about 2005. It will go into an orbit around the sun at roughly the same distance as Jupiter, and be capable of seeing Earth-sized planets out to about 50 light-years. Further, plans call for the ability to analyze the spectrum of the planet, which will allow for atmospheric analysis.
A recent issue of Discover magazine had a "field guide" to all the new extra-solar planets that we've found up to now. 47 Ursa Majoris has a Jupiter-sized planet that orbits its star at about the same distance Mars is from ours... Given that 47Uma is a little brighter and a little larger, this planet could very well have habitable moons, and is actually one of the targets for a new radio search, so the science already has applications.
As for the Hubble issue, I suspect it will be handled like Mir and kept aloft for at least five years beyond its expected life. There are plans for a "Hubble II" that uses a segmented mirror like the Keck. (And whomever asked about the X-Ray observatory: no, it cannot take over Hubble's duties -- it is without optical capabilities.)
As far as I'm concerned, the only negative thing he listed was the race-hate propoganda.
What's illegal or immoral about being anti-Christian?
As someone who graduated in the last two years, I can definitely say that the most important knowledge you gain in higher education is social. As a "geek" in high school and middle school, I was extremely well-read, and as a result, in college, there were very few classes in which I learned something *new*.
Perhaps a way to deal with the lack of socialization inherent in a virtual campus, we can force all of the students to use IRC for an hour every night. Okay, kidding. A real solution would be to allow students who have been out of high school for at least two years -- whether living in their parents' basement and slinging burgers for a paycheck, in the Army for however much time, or in a meatspace college. This would give the individual time to develop socially, away from the clique-ridden environment that is secondary education in America.
I suspect that the university itself will not be free, but rather tuition-free. There are always associated costs with education -- books, notebooks, etc. Granted, things like notebooks are irrelavent when you have pico or BBEdit, but there are still going to be things that need to be read on paper because they don't exist in electronic editions yet.
As for cheating -- this could be tough to monitor, and I agree that it could cause a problem with people flooding the market with no actual credentials. However, cheating already goes on in normal universities, and it should be dealt with by giving the student a failing grade in the particular class, and eventually lead to permanent expulsion should it be a chronic problem.
All in all, though, I think this is an incredibly good idea. I'll be enrolling.
First off, nothing in science is "foregone conclusion."
Next, let's cover your polar cap statements. The south pole of Mars is covered with frozen carbon dioxide, and not water ice. Your statement does apply to the north polar cap, I believe. (I seem to recall reading material to that effect.)
Lastly, what would Mars's proximity to the asteroid belt have to do with the presence of water? Nothing. Maybe you're thinking of the Kuiper Belt, which out beyond either Neptune or Uranaus.
Perhaps what they should consider doing is open-sourcing Napster and making the server software available as well. Then you end up with a more decentralized structure similar to IRC or USENET, and less of a target to hit. It also seems to me that the trick that Hotline Server admins use ("click on my porn and casino banners to get the site login and password") would be pointless, because users would flock to the free servers, making them the ones with the most variety, and therefore, the most attractive. Again does anyone know if there's a published RFC of the Napster protocol? If so, please drop me an email at dan.NOSPAM.bailey@NOSPAM.mindwired.com! Thanks!
I guess this prevents things like http://mars.nasa.gov, once they get their Internet-enabled probes up there. Some idiot would probably sue on the grounds that US gov't was laying claim to the planet in violation of the Outer Space Treaty. Of course, if you want to get rich, file the lawsuit based upon the American flags planted all over the moon. .Mars NOW!
Of course information has a predator -- it's called entropy. Which increases with time.
Duh.
Furthermore, ever head of signal-to-noise ratio? In the case of information, you can argue that the noise (JonKatz, "My Cat Fluffy" pages, banner ads, etc.) is what interferes with the signal (intelligent websites, etc.). To try and build an analogy of predator-prey ecology around signal-to-noise is bunk.
Predator-prey is something that applies to finite-but-expanding systems. In the case of information, you could argue that it is an expanding-but-infinite system. (This goes into the arguments put forth by Wittgenstein's Tractatus on language and language creation -- each linguistic construct being completely unique.) Anything you say, write, etc., has a basic uniqueness about it -- chances are, no one is ever going to write the same thing the exact same way. The basic theme may be similar, but the overall presentation will differ radically.
Where noise comes into the Web is when you have similar information about the same subject, or pages that draw you with the promise of certain information and then present something entirely different. (Like font sites with the phrase "sexy blondes" in their META tags.)
Jon == noise.
----------------------------------------
Yo soy El Fontosaurus Grande!
While not wanting to dredge up Stephenson again, I'd have to go with the "franchise model" (for lack of a better term).
What you'll see is something akin to "user groups", where all of them are in different geographic locations, but united for the same general reason.
You would probably see an interaction model similar to that of the Greek system in colleges where fraternities will come to the aid of travelling 'brothers' from other geographical areas.
In fact, given that a majority of the Greek organizations have a solid web presence, but are tied together primarily in meatspace, you could argue that they are rudimentary HCs.
HCs, like frathouses, benefit by a sharing of resources -- everyone gets a place to live, there's always some food to eat, a supply of labor for whatever project comes up, etc. In college, situations like these develop from a lack of resources (money, intelligence, whatever) -- and what the individual frat members couldn't do before (think, make friends, party, study, cheat) on their own, they can now do, thanks to a grouping of resources. What I think you'll see happening is as the resources of various geographic locales become more and more scarce, you'll see a turn toward HCs -- where small clusters of people with similar ideologies pool their limited resources to a.) survive and b.) advance those ideologies.
Nation-states, such as the United States, will inevitably be unable to stay united due to the large number of people with differing ideologies. (Then again, I could be wrong...it's worked for 225 years so far.) It just seems to me that the ideal human social group numbers between 15 to 25. Beyond that, what's the point? You'll have major dissidents.
Ugh. Sociology. And me on a caffeine-bonk and not thinking clearly.
----------------------------------------
Yo soy El Fontosaurus Grande!
VCs are likely to be supplanted by Hybrid Communities, IMHO. HCs being a situation where you have a local cluster of people that are living in a compact area that combine their resources both in cyberspace and meatspace.
I would assume that HCs will crystallize around people with similar interests/goals, etc. The VC aspect of it will be in interconnecting the meatspace communties around the world that have similar interests.
For those that have read Snow Crash, this may sound like the concept of the FOQNE (Franchise-Owned Quasi-National Entity), and truth be told, it's probably pretty close.
I don't say this because of any particular loyalty to Neal Stephenson's views, however. It just seems to me that cyberspace, no matter how good it gets, can ever supplant meatspace. People need facetime, plain and simple.
Does this imply an end to the nation-state, as implied in Snow Crash? Certainly not. What this causes is a recurrence of the in-touch neighborhood, which is something America has been lacking since the 60's. A place where you know, and can trust your neighbors.
Nation-states are still going to be necessary to regulate commerce, infrastructure (including all those lovely bandwidth-carrying trunks), and manage things like defense and disaster relief.
Then again, maybe not. Predicting the future is a dicey proposition at best.
----------------------------------------
Yo soy El Fontosaurus Grande!