Culture Wars: Francois Mitterrand has Declared War on Mickey, Madonna, and All-American Culture. Bad News, Francois: Mickey’s Winning

France’s patriarchs are outraged. Europeans’ love affair with Europe is threatened by this cultural flirtation with the Americans, and they are determined to put a stop to it … The hype over interactive television, video-on-demand, and music delivered over the Internet, only strengthens the French resolve. If they do not take a stand now, they reckon, it will soon be too late. But, on the contrary, it’s too late already for the sorts of measures the French have in mind. In an age of interactive media, cultural quotas will prove at least as self-defeating – and if anything, useless – as the Maginot Line, France’s last great attempt to wall itself off from invaders.

Lost World of the Future: Looking Back at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, David Gelernter’s ‘Novel with an Index’ Exposes the Irrevocable Link Between Technology and Nostalgia

The explosion of energy coming from digital designers, musicians, filmmakers, photographers, and even advertisers is altering our basic notions of creativity. A new dream of the future is being born. Of course, in a half-century or so, these same digital revolutionaries will form the nostalgic material of somebody else’s “history.” Imagine the writer of that book – or CD-ROM or digital bedside laptop tablet – longing for the time when clunky computers sprouted wires, modems hissed, and chips held finite memory. Think how much wonder our time might hold.

How Anarchy Works: On Location with the Masters of the Metaverse, the Internet Engineering Task Force

“We reject: kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code.” Which might translate to, “In the IETF, we don’t allow caucusing, lobbying, and charismatic leaders to chart our path, but when something out on the Net really seems to work and makes sense to most of us, that’s the path we’ll adopt.” … The IETF’s political culture is hardy enough so that the Net mechanisms and structures it has fostered may very well enable the Net to survive in good enough shape through the next millennium.

How Anarchy Works: On Location with the Masters of the Metaverse, the Internet Engineering Task Force

The True Masters of the Universe are not freemasons, mergers-and-acquisitions specialists, or venture capitalists but the members of a voluntary association of tech wizards that create and oversee the technological future of the Internet. It is the IETF’s work on tough technical problems that will make possible the whiz-bang Net applications of the future.

The Playground of Big Science: Sandia Labs Used to be the ‘Conscience’ of the Cold War. Now That it’s Over, the $4 Billion Question is Whether These Specialists in Everything from Astrophysics to Virtual Reality Can Create a New Mission – and Find a New Market – Before Congress Pulls the Plug

Welcome to the infinitesimal world of micromachines – MEMS, as they are known – where physical laws are turned upside down and an entire mechanism can fit easily on the head of a pin … Not only are these “microlabs” smaller than anything that was imaginable a few years ago, but they can be fabricated 1,000 to the silicon wafer … Some of the fantasies include free-ranging microrobots cruising through the bloodstream, reporting on conditions, and making repairs on a cellular level as well as microfactories creating entire tool chests of micromachines.

‘Anarcho-Emergentist-Republicans’: Is There a New Politics Emerging in the Net/Cyberspace/Digital Culture?

Now, when IRC, phone sex, CB radio, TV talk shows, and talk radio coalesce into an array of 24-hour pick-a-peer channels you can patch into anywhere with your wireless headset, and the dividing line between virtual reality and real life becomes mostly academic; and, on top of that, when the whole hassle over sampling, copying, digitizing, licensing, and assuring intellectual property rights gets ironed out in some grand ASCAP-like registry scheme where consumers subscribe to licensing banks that grant them their own usage rights over all media with that bank’s logo-stamp (Bill Gates is already heading in this direction)…. Where, then, does that leave us?

‘Anarcho-Emergentist-Republicans’: Is There a New Politics Emerging in the Net/Cyberspace/Digital Culture?

Like the Internet itself, the process of global integration may have no directing center on which to pin the blame, but merely its own internal logic and the confluence of self-interested economic and political entities. In ad hoc fashion, the big players end up with an unseen agenda that may be quite sufficient to overturn the old order of politics.

‘Anarcho-Emergentist-Republicans’: Is There a New Politics Emerging in the Net/Cyberspace/Digital Culture?

The nation-state is now receding, yielding center stage to “the marketplace”; the action in the marketplace is, interestingly, everywhere: local, global, wherever. And “wherever” is increasingly dictated by “pure” economics and interests, not by national borders … Wilkinson observes: “I believe that we’re in for some nationalist noise and some nationalist violence before the transition is done, but I do believe that it will finish, to be replaced by kinds of tribal and commercial conflicts. What will remain of nationalism? My bet is that it will have the character – the strength and relative weight – of brand loyalty; perhaps in some cases, that charged variety of brand loyalty, a fan’s relationship to a sports team.”

The Physicist: As Director of Microsoft’s Advanced Technology Group, Nathan Myhrvold Oversees 650 Serfs and Spends $150 Million a Year to Keep Bill on Top

We’re in a phase where some of the theoretical underpinnings of our society are changing. We’re in the process of understanding how society will be impacted by the phenomena of widespread information and ubiquitous communication. How will business be changed by that? Can we create such a thing as an effective, scientific version of economics?