Over the eons I've been a fan of and sucker for each latest automated system to 'simplify' and 'bring order to' my life. Very early on this led me to the beautiful-and-doomed Lotus Agenda for my DOS computers and Actioneer for the early Palm.

What's happened with society is that we have created these devices computers which already can register and process huge amounts of information which is a significant fraction of the amount of information that human beings themselves as a species can process.

We're going to be able to ask our computers to monitor things for us and when certain conditions happen are triggered the computers will take certain actions and inform us after the fact.

But picketing - picketing for or against something and handing out literature - these are conspicuously formal actions. They have to be understood as indirect communication.

However even during the preparations for action we laid our plans in such a manner that should there be progress through diplomatic negotiation we would be well prepared to cancel operations at the latest moment that communication technology would have permitted.

Anonymous blog comments vapid video pranks and lightweight mash-ups may seem trivial and harmless but as a whole this widespread practice of fragmentary impersonal communication has demeaned personal interaction.

People make music to get a reaction. Music is communication.

Society cannot share a common communication system so long as it is split into warring factions.

Ever since the collapse of cap and trade legislation and the realization that President Obama is unlikely to ever utter the words 'climate change' in public again much less use the bully pulpit to prepare the nation for the catastrophic risks of inaction the movement has been in a funk.

Many a revolution started with the actions of a few. Only 56 men signed the Declaration of Independence. A few hanging together can lead a nation to change.