It's a beautiful fall day in New York today.  The sun is out, it's chilly but still comfortable, traffic is moving well and the constant chaotic flow of people and things move along in a bliss of complexity.  The community thrives, Wall Street is up, technology is our bright, shining light, hope for the future holding promise of magical wonders that even now don't fail to amaze.  The tide is rising, all boats float higher, and things are looking good....for those who have boats.

But this isn't about "have and have not."  Let's accept that.  Let's acknowledge that the trends seem to indicate that prosperity isn't a ubiquitious thing, and in fact that while economies may thrive, poverty is also increasing.  Also, let's simply state that poverty is a bad thing that we'd rather not abide.  And any hope for its eradication lies not in either of the places we may be prone to look, i.e.: religion or politics, but rather in the new estate that is rapidly becoming our shared domain, the internet.  That being the premise, consider the possibilities.

Things of most value are free.  This has always been true in a spiritual sense.  In our time we are witnessing the unfolding of this phenomenon is a material sense, to the burgeoning extent information saturates material life.  Falling prices, growing profits, new opportunities, all spontaneously arise as more and more information technology proliferates virtually every aspect of life.  Our virtual lives feed our material lives in magnificant ways.  Soon the integration of television, radio, telecomminicasion, internet, purchasing, sales, education, investments, medicine and entertainment will be delivered via very high bandwidth communications networks to households worldwide.  And the television or PC or wallsized flat panel display or wristwatch-phone will be given away if you buy the service providers product.  "Buy my communications services for $0.3 a minute and I'll give you a free PC."  The sense of membership will extend to a worldwide community, crossing all boundaries that would try to censor or control.   Free.  The things of most value are free.

This is merely stating that the trend in technology, both hardware and software, has been better, faster and cheaper with each successive generation.  As more and more information technology is incorporated in every aspect of every design, production or distribution processes, the economic trends that have driven technology will also affect other material economic sectors, thus bringing down costs (and therefore prices) for just about everything.  Prices can fall to as low as zero.  And then they're free.  At that point, they become infinitely valuable.

Telecommunications bandwidth is doubling wordwide every twelve months.  Soon it will be possible to easily communicate from anywhere on the planet (and very likely in space) to anywhere on the planet.  Consider a world where highbandwidth media integrated internet interfaces are free and available worldwide.  And for pennies a day, you can enjoin that community.  Would that not tend to address the disparity of fortunes for our species?

And here is where we get to the religion.  Or  politics.  They are the same in the larger sense.  The community that arises and embraces us all is made up of so many islands of beliefs, organized around principles presumably expoused by their belief island.  As we come together in something that would contain us all, we must be cognizant and appreciative of this rich, diverse heritage without being bound by its limitations.  The scope of human thought (and beliefs) has not yet encountered much less learned to cope with the onslaught of change we only now see beginning to unfold.  There are no institutions that can regulate this coming.  And no religions that can explain it adequately.   The thing is the thing itself.  We are all connected, soon quite literally.  Perhaps more intimately than we can yet imagine.

The internet was built on open protocols.  Open Source Software is revolutionizing an industry built on change.  Freedom is the thing, the frictionless surface, the optimal path, the comminty's premise.  The internet is the compelling voice of freedom and no company, government or religion can ever own it or regulate it.  Because it is the reflection of that community that embraces us all.

---

Play Poker Hemp related Playboy The Libertarian Party The Extropians