But science and technology can do anything! Sure, we can't do perpetual motion now but it's only a matter of time right? Time was you'd be laughed out of town for suggesting one day humans could fly or communicate across oceans with invisible waves. Who knows what the future holds?

Would love to see some tits and boobies if any have gone extinct.

Was just returning the generalization. I've never heard all these complaints from the same person. But I have been questioned by everyone I have a personal relationship with that is on Facebook. So consider how many of your FB friends you have regular personal contact with; I've been forced to defend myself to roughly…

And I'm sure the non-Facebooker in your life just loves hearing about how he's just making his life harder, and overreacting to security concerns, and becoming less marketable, and worrying too much about his privacy, and telling kids to get off his lawn. I know I just love trying to explain why I never joined to…

Really? Any data? I'm not an American, but it seems this should at least be limited to certain types of documents, and shouldn't apply to the assorted detritus of social interaction.

Funny thing... I found Facebook profoundly inconvenient. Every day my wife agrees with me a little more. The signal-to-noise has been dropping steadily for years.

My biggest problem remains that the service is proprietary and exclusive. Not that that's ever going to change.

Not sure what I changed. You were very ambiguous, so I assumed you were sticking to the context and inferred that you meant that the anti-public drinking laws or "no outside drinks" rules are appropriate and well-reasoned.

Over-legislating public behaviour is a problem in Canada, too. Especially the bigger municipalities.

This law isn't in place for a (good) reason. If drunken rowdies are the problem, then outlaw drunken rowdiness. It's pretty easy to spot. If you can't tell someone's drinking alcohol without inspecting their containers or smelling their breath, then who cares?

Unfortunately, it will never be conclusively proven or widely accepted that Large Corporations are a significant factor in any future catastrophe. We certainly won't see an end to ambition and power-seeking, either. So expect large corporations to reappear quickly; if they ever disappear at all.

Reduced population can be fantastic. It basically puts an end to development pressure so you have a rare opportunity to restore greenspace and reorganize poorly designed neighborhoods. And people might even welcome reassigning car lanes for bikes and mass transit.

Might Americans also be less attached to their cities because they don't actually live in them? An 1/8 acre plot of immaculate lawn looks the same no matter what city it's on the edge of.

Technology can't do a damn things about what is actually impossible. Anything that can be defined as being P and not-P simultaneously simply cannot exist. And I mean the strict logi al contradiction, not in the "both salty and sweet" kind (that would be P1 and P2) or the poetic kind that might describe a human as inhum…

Well... except when something is impossible. There are plenty of logically impossible things that simply can't exist, so causing them to exist is impossible, no matter how powerful you become. I don't even think delusion will help since imagining impossible things is itself impossible.

But that's no fun. I want my future fellow pedestrians to Cleese it up a bit.

I've already had a few jobs "doing what I loved." The problem was that, apart from earning a living, all the bits that qualified them as "jobs" wrecked my joy for the parts I loved. So I still had a job I was merely tolerating, but with one less hobby to brighten up my free time.

My main concern is that when the infrastructure for 24h identity confirmation and universal surveillance are put in place it might not be done by a publicly accountable government making dubious claims about improved safety, but by private companies with a much more enticing offer of enhanced personalization and…

I'm fully expecting to see a few subcultures to emerge in response to "from a distance" surveillance: everything from face paint, voice processors, and silly walking to active jamming.

But if "how to think" is subjective, and if NdGT isn't claiming there's a correct way to think, then (a) how can it be possible to know how to think and (b) how can it be said that anyone's thought process is inferior?