Who are the people who practice and/ or study telepathy? How do we further develop this ablity? Can we communicate with someone if we had the phone number or url to their mind? Or maybe it's as simple as knowing their name. I know that the government can't control a person's brainwaves.

Note from MJ: Haha - telepathy wasn't quite what I had in mind, but it would do the trick ;-) Seriously I'm thinking more along the lines of a method that transcends devices and architecture, but probably within known boundaries. It could be some type of distributed network similar to to how peer-to-peer file sharing works.

The first thought I had when you mentioned transcending the wired network was UWB. I heard about this great ultra-wide bandwidth scheme many years ago and expected it to be the next big thing, then never heard anything serious about it ever again. A quick web search got me an article that at least confirms that I correctly understood the promises made by the technology.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2002/pulpit_20020124_000720.html

I'm tempted to agree with Cringely that there is a real conspiracy feel to it, even to the point of the term UWB being diluted by referring to completely independent (and inferior) technologies. Heck, the ultra-paranoid part of me doesn't even want to post this publicly...

The key to using UWB for an alter'net is the effectively undetectable, unblockable transmissions. And the fact that it is low power makes it easier on the hardware side as well.

From your comment above it sounds like when you say "device" you are talking about ubiquitous software (relatively easy) not some specific piece of hardware (relatively hard).

I'm not working on UWB directly, but it could be facilitated by the EE device research I am currently working on.

We live in exciting times!

Note from MJ: Hey Wayne, great lead - let's check it out. Let's get the people with the Knowledge and the Will to converge right here. In terms of device, I suppose it could be ubiquitous software that runs on generic computers. It's possible that this would live as a hidden layer inside the outer (censor-able) net that couldn't be controlled because the information is not decipherable. Of course, if one were to outlaw the net entirely it could be stopped. If it were a specific piece of hardware the device could be outlawed, so perhaps this system living inside existing controlled infrastructures might be a way ...

His dark eyes glinted in the sunlight. He rolled up his cigarette, licked it and fixed his gaze on my while waiting to light. "Buff" (my nickname), "some day you'll finally realize, it's just you and the Great Spirit. Now block." My Native America martial arts instructor taught me the most significant thing I ever learned about decentralized power, that when we support our personal liberty with willful action, we break from indoctrination (in whatever great or subtle form it may hold sway). When one feels his or herself to be sovereign while in relationship to something else, balance and peace are achieved. "Feel the earth's energy rise up through your body. Connect with that power. Sink and flow, but remain alert. Remember. Or you will fall into mind-control. I cannot rescue you. You can only rescue yourself." My teacher wasn't being melodramatic. He well knew the devastating effect the seizure and centralizing of power and had on his tribe. The Lakota once rode proud on horses spanning the Plains up and down the continent. Now they suck down the whiskey and chew on government cheese, beat their children and stare at the TV, filled with self loathing and anger. Why? Because a government possessed of the Knowledge, the Means and the Will decided that was what needed to happen. So they created it. Just like the Nazis. Just like so many.

I was fixed to my seat as I read 'The Rise of the Author'. It clarified and expressed many things that were fuzzy for me.

I submit the human taste is changing. The long tail search is a powerful notion that works into this conversation because that is how users define their own "brand essence", by exactly naming what they seek.

I'm not sure what Mr. Bernays would advise those who are addicted to using mass control (the other kind, not Mr. Kern's) and seek to stifle what is happening with the internet. He might be stumped. His game is predicated on totally different factors and a different set rules, as you so astutely point out.

I really enjoyed the read. It was great.

Yet again mark blew my mind off. Mark: when do you have time to think through all these things?

I like the idea expressed above in MJ's reply to Wayne's suggestion of UWB, the idea that the encapsulated aspect of operating "from within" while in a stealthy mode. It reminds me of Isaac Asimov's "Second Foundation" idea (from the Foundation Trilogy) which was, in fact, hidden within the depth of the Empire's capital.

However, I am not sure that the "unbinding" of the internet will in itself have the effect Mark expects. I think the whole "pattern" of society may have to change. I would suggest that one way to do that would be to change from "horizontal" orientation to a vertical one.

What I mean by that is that so much of what we do is based on transporting ourselves physically from one place to another. Unquestionably, certain amounts of goods have to travel from source to destination (to the consumers), whether that be foodstuffs or Wii sets. But the necessity for humans to congregate in specific places to accomplish tasks has become a superstitious ritual that consumes vast resources of time, energy and real estate un-necessarily. Most administrative, clerical, design, and higher brain function activities in the workplace can just as easily take place in the "homeoffice" (not the "Home Office"). With rapidly expanding bandwidth for communications and a tendency, as MIT media lab head Nick Negroponte has predicted, for us to swap wired connections (like telephone) for wireless ones (like cellular phones) and vice versa, the wireless broadband internet may soon be upon us. Now think up (if it's night, look up, too) and imagine all the communications satellites zooming across the sky. Dozens of them were put up there to support a network of satellite phones that Microsoft and Motorola were jointly funding, but never sold enough to get the whole armada of proposed satellites into orbit. But my point really is, that with telecommuting replacing fighting the road warrior battle every morning just to get your physical body to some central collection point called an "office", and pointing our communications upwards in wireless mode (whether directly or only after some broadband wireless connection to a centralized upload download linking antenna) we save tremendous amounts of time and energy, and solve the crisis of transportation bandwidth that the American public in particular seems reluctant to sacrifice their individual automobile freedom for public common mass transit to resolve.

We still need to solve problems about how electric energy is generated, how we fuel our remaining tranportation without adding fossil fuel carbon to the atmosphere, narrow the gap between the very rich and the very poor yet in a way that respects the needs of the plants and animals of the planet to occupy some of earth's surface too, and to feed and educate everyone to the full extent of their ability to become productive members of our global society. We need too, to keep people from perpetuating the "us" versus "them" mode of thinking that incorporates prejudices into whole ways of living and thinking, as well as find better ways to motivate people to weed out corruption and criminal behaviour as well as find better ways to detect and prevent crimes, while making justice more swift and sure. We have a long way to go.

We need to start soon, though. We need multi-faceted solutions that tackle root causes with bold innovative thinking that can integrate resolutions to multiple problems through a multi-disciplinary approach. If I never do anything else in my life but inspire one person to spend their life pursuing these goals, I will consider my time well spent.

Sincerely,
Love

Stafford "Doc" Williamson

Mark, have you watched this video on YouTube called "Human Lobotomy"?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP_3WnJ42kw

I just finished watching it and was amazed how nicely it dovetails with "Rise of the Authors".

While mainly about Net Neutrality, it also looks at the rise of the individual's power and liberty brought on by the invention of the printing presses and the loss of this via commercialisation; the freedom and power that came to individuals via the Internet and the danger of losing it to the anti-Net Neutrality machinations of large commercial organisations.

I was very inspired by this video and "Rise of the Authors" and it is well worth any of your readers who are interested in this issue, and finding a solution to it, taking the time to watch it and passing it on to others along with your excellent booklet.

May God bless you & your readers.

Dear Mark,

Thank you for sharing so freely of your knowledge and wisdom.

The decentralizing information device you are looking for exists already as far as I understand the technology. It is the peer-to-peer (wireless mesh) network as implemented e.g. in the OLPC One Laptop Per Child Project. See it explained in video by Nicholas Negroponte, "The vision behind One Laptop Per Child" at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/41?gclid=CMqn8KHr_40CFSBMGgodzFpxLg

Bonus video about simplicity http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/228

Greetings, Bernd