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Okay, hackers, it's time to use your powers for good.

The "public internet" is for the poor Pledging to keep the "public internet" neutral is great, but what happens when companies stop wanting to offer their services on it? Googlezon has the answer: In their proposal, they say that it's perfectly OK for companies and consumers to buy non-neutral, non-public "special services" online. If you're a media company that streams videogames, for example, your customers want a guarantee that the game won't stall out because of a crappy "public internet" connection. So you make your game available only to people with the special service "gamer package." Your customers pay you; you pay Googlezon; now there's a superfast connection for the privileged few with money to burn. And what happens when news websites start delivering their pretty pictures and infographics in 3D? Verizon has already suggested 3D is a perfect "special service" to deliver in a non-neutral way. In five years, the public internet is going to look boring and obsolete. Where's the 3D? Where are all the cool games and streaming viddies? The public internet? Yeah, that's just for poor people. But guess what's going to remain on the public net, the place where you go when you don't have money? Certainly there will be educational resources like Wikipedia. But mostly it's going to be advertisement-saturated free content from major entertainment companies. And of course there will be many opportunities to give your personal information to Facebook, or gamble away your non-existent savings on Zynga games. (Sorry - did I say gamble? I meant "pay for premium poker game content.") Put in brick-and-mortar terms: There won't be any produce markets on the public internet, but there will be plenty of liquor stores.

the special "conservative service" package

People have speculated before about the idea that the Internet might become self-aware and turn into the first "real" A.I., but could it be more likely to happen to cities, in which humans actually live and work and navigate, generating an even more chaotic system?

"By connecting and providing visibility into disparate systems, cities and buildings can operate like living organisms, sensing and responding quickly to potential problems before they occur to protect citizens, save resources and reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions," reads the invitation to IBM's PULSE 2010 event.

And Cisco is already building the first of these smart cities: Songdo, a Korean "instant city," which will be completely controlled by computer networks — including ubiquitious Telepresence applications, video screens which could be used for surveillance. Cisco's chief globalization officer, Wim Elfrink, told the San Jose Mercury News: Everything will be connected - buildings, cars, energy - everything. This is the tipping point. When we start building cities with technology in the infrastructure, it's beyond my imagination what that will enable.

The printing press, the assembly line, and recently the genetic engineering have all brought along with them protest and outrage from a populace sure that these advances will bring about the end of the human species.

“These robots are able to hide and evade in ways that other robots simply have not been able to do. That indicates that such behaviour is not overly complicated and well within the reach of modern robots.”

Dr. Edward Webb