In the long run, I think any attempt to regulate the Net will fail.

[Jackpine Radical]

Consider the following:

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/02/23/japan.satellite/index.html?eref=edition

(CNN) -- Japan launched a rocket Saturday carrying a satellite that will test new technology that promises to deliver "super high-speed Internet" service to homes and businesses around the world.
art.japansat.ap.jpg

A rocket carrying a super-fast Internet satellite lifts off from its launch pad on the Japanese island of Tanagashima. The rocket carrying the WINDS satellite -- a joint project of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries -- lifted off its pad at 5:55 p.m. (0855 GMT).

If the technology proves successful, subscribers with small dishes will connect to the Internet at speeds many times faster than what is now available over residential cable or DSL services.

The Associated Press said the satellite would offer speeds of up to 1.2 gigabytes per second.

The service initially would focus on the Asia-Pacific region close to Japan, a JAXA news release said. "Among other uses, this will make possible great advances in telemedicine, which will bring high-quality medical treatment to remote areas, and in distance education, connecting students and teachers separated by great distances," JAXA said.

Individual people are going to become more interconnected, not less, over time. To imagine otherwise is akin to supposing that more complex systems will degenerate into simpler systems over time--that mammals will devolve into starfish or something. The genie of human interconnectedness--even the rudiments of a planetwide intelligence in which each of us is something like an individual braincell--is out of the bottle. Short of planetary destruction, there is no going back.

[Warren Stupidity]

1. Everyone of the switches and routers can be managed to censor

access to systems and to collect information about who is communicating with who. This is already being done. People will indeed be ever more completely connected through the corporate state's communication system, and that system will function as the corporate state deems proper. I do not share your faith that any attempt to regulate the net will ultimately fail.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. I keep thinking of the ld Soviet Union and their perennial attempts to

suppresss unauthorized communication, and the response of the people with samizdat and the like. I don't know that your more dystopic views are wrong, but message control only works to a certain extent. The first requirement, at least for western-style suppression of information, is to maintain the illusion that it is not happening so that people simply believe what they are fed and don't go looking for better information.

[walldude]

3. I agree... Republicans have a serious problem in that

they may have all the good numbers crunchers, the "businessmen" the managers, the corporations, and the bullshit artists on their side. What they are seriously lacking is, creativity, talent, and technical skills. Anything that requires thinking outside the box is beyond the pale of Republican brain functions. They will never have the best music, the best art, the best theater, the best writers, the best movies or the best hackers. Liberal minds will prevail as they usually do one way or another.