Michael Cardenas wrote: (Begin Quote) I'm curious as to what makes you, or anyone on this list, think that these technologies by themselves will cause any sort of political upheaval.......What's to say that these technologies are not going to be shaped to meet the needs and wants of the transnational corporations that run our government? (End Quote)
That's a really good set of points, and despite the fact that I made the original comment about WiFi, Crypto, and so on, I don't think the answer is 100% obvious. First of all, let me say that I don't necessarily disagree with you. I believe it's entirely possible that such technologies will be co-opted by the transnationals that will probably run things for a while. But even in this scenario, the relationship between people and companies will change, and if some companies are lucky they'll find a way to bridge the gap between the world that's almost here and this world. As a for instance, the concept of a "copyright" of any digital medium is soon going to be an anachronism, if it isn't already. Log on to Gnutella and look at the number of users online at that time (it'll be something like 7 or 8 digits!). (This may easily mean the end of big record companies, and big, bland tasteless acts like 'N-Sync.) So even in this limited sense, things are changing. With respect to tyranies, I am almost as convinced that things will change there too. WIth ubiquitous WiFi (not too remote a possibility, methinks), and with cheap digital cameras (there are already video cameras built into cell phones costing a few hundred bucks), the world in which governments can keep some police-terror action under wraps will be gone too. One might go further and picture whole governments collapsing due to applications built on top of strong crypto. Perhaps. Or as you say perhps governments will morph into something somewhat different. But for me the short-term point is that a lot of these technologies have the characteristic of giving people communication options they didn't have before. That's a form of freedom, even if it isn't used. And it will change things. How? We can all speculate but I don't think it's obvious. TD
