The problem is essentially the same as with any other technology we've developed: it's evolving orders of magnitude more quickly than humans themselves are evolving, physically and socio-politically.

Physically and socio-politically?

I think you're implying that without the tech, future humans would be more adapted to better the consequences of tech. I call bullshit.

I don't know if we're much brainier than we were 5k years ago, but if we are, tech is what allowed us to put those precious nutrients and energy into brains instead of muscles.

Furthermore, tech is what allows us to "evolve" socio-politically. Without communications, you're hunter-gatherers who can sneakily backstab competitors without future consequences. Without nukes, it's viable (and possibly even sane, in a horrible evil way) to start a World War. Without tech, an otherwise perfectly admirable person gets sick and dies for no good reason. This goes on and on in so many nasty ways I don't wanna talk about.

The ensmallening(*) of the world is how we grow up. You might not like some of the directions it goes, but look where we're coming from.

We (humans) are not anywhere near ready to live in a world without borders

Maybe you're right, but you're casting it as though there's some progression where later, we might be ready. WTF are you talking about? Without tech you think we'll eventually become "wise beings of pure energy" from Star Trek or Babylon 5?

(*) Principle Skinner is telling me that's a cromulent word, so don't make fun of it.

It actually makes me think the requirement for a passport in the first place is a bit odd.

Sshhhhh! [waving arms frantically] Stop asking questions!

Instead of talking about the power requirements, I've had a different question nagging me for a few decades: Some plasma guns fire straighter than others, thanks to rifling?

If Facebook loses and citizens start pushing for similar laws in other states, it could keep our activities in public relatively anonymous for a bit longer.

No. Laws do not have the ability to put genies back into bottles.

Oh, what a dream that would be!

The temperature fluctuates here, iirc, between 72 and 75. 2 cubes over, registered 72.9 when mine registered 74.9. Air flow and the closed vent are major players here.

"They" need it? The musicians who want it, already have it. They'll sell you music. Buy it from them.

And if you simply must stream it, instead of playing it from local storage, then stream it from your file server.

Don't have a file server? Bad nerd!

Like awakening from a dream... :)

What's your real connection to Finland? At one point there was lots of media coverage about german/finnish millionaire being busted and what not but besides of few photos of finnish in nz mantion and side remarks of your mother being a finn, there hasn't really been any proper statements from you and your ties with "juro" roots..

Heh. Nice find.

Mark Russinovich experimented a fair bit with this under Windows XP - there at least, you could actually kill off smss.exe and still have a working system; really, the only one you need to leave in place is csrss.exe, since that provides the userspace parts of the Win32 API, and without Win32 you can't run any "normal" Windows programs at all. Of course, you also lack important things like networking, making this rather academic - and you can't reboot any more either, since you've now killed off the process which handles that!

Then there was that time under NT that i tried organizing the system directory. Well, it was kind of okay until the next reboot. Not being able to boot is a great teacher too. :)

Trial and error, it's a great teacher :)