If we can identify a zero point, we should just calculate all technical time in seconds past that date. There is already a Julian Day. I would call it the Julian Second. It is now 212,268,345,960. That is not much good for daily activities but perfect;y fine for any electronic system Trivial to write for phone, computer or whatever.

Twitter may be, unconsciously, moving out of the way so that someone can replace it with something better and less susceptible to the control of oxygen thieves.

I have observed that you also are very enthusiastic about your hatred of your phone companies.
If half the stories I hear are true, it is totally horrendous!

If the USA starts acting in an illegal manner, there might be moves to block such acquisitions. Yes, the USA would then start to block foreign buyouts of its companies. If that continues, eventually over 4% of humanity would be structurally, financially and socially isolated from the rest of the planet. Trade wars tend to favour the bigger players. It does not look like the USA is going to stay one of those forever.

So is the USA. You have a lot of citizens who identify with their perceived ethnic origins. You would have the IRA upset with you as well...

people with a very successful choice of parents

Even those who have far exceeded their parents can often be seen to have been comfortably off before they grew up. For example. Bill Gates does not come from poor origins, does he?

The major exception to this are people with sociopathic tendencies or worse. There are certainly plenty of those in organised crime - legal and illegal.

I'm quite happy not to be from your country. There are other variations of what we do elsewhere but in the UK, tax is deducted by my employer and sent to the "tax man". There are fairly simple ways of calculating how its done but basically, I pay 1/12 of my tax each month. Other deductions aside, I get about £10k tax free per year and pay 23% on the rest. If I was higher paid, some would be at the higher rate. If I was self employed, I would need to do what you have to do but even a tiny business can deal with PAYE (Pay As You Earn). I ran a payroll once and it took less than 2 days work per month to do about 350 peoples pay & deductions. Your system seems very complicated/labourious.

I use it this way and cannot see any other use for it.

Want to send me a message? Try email, SMS, skype.G+ and so on. Even Facebook.

Want to send me a picture - see above...

I see no other use for a 140 character max message than to replace the RSS feed

I don't know if it is a real theory but it is an item in a half written book that I may finish one day.

When humans move into space, they will move away from the need to follow any solar day. They will use a 100,000 second day. That's 27 Hours, 42 minutes and 40 seconds.

It's only a minor plot item so I haven't worked it all out but there are several people here saying that they would settle into a 28 hour rhythm. I think I would too.

You picture it wrong. They are unrepresentative. I am Scottish. I am also British, Orcadian, European, Western and various other groupings. The one "British" is good enough for most purposes when doing business or travelling. Scottish identifies what part of the UK and Orcadian could be my ethnicity within that. The modern trend is towards linking states, not breaking them up into non-functional bits.

Because it wouldn't work. Yes they are a long way from the control centres of an over-centralised nation. Just like Scotland. They have their own capital, state plant, legislature just like Scotland. It's a long list. It doesn't matter. Some things are best done locally - probably a lot more than actually gets done this way but some other things are better done as part of a larger system.

Nationalism is the past. History is interesting and must be known but we don't want to go and live in it. That's why our ancestors left...

Yes. I had a Gmail address long before. I also used it to log into other things. When they offer me a new service, I look and decide. I have not bought any Google books. I still have an account. Big deal.I have not made any use of their subscription music offering either but they remind me about it every time I go to listen to my own stuff.

We all know why Google likes to link its stuff? To track us better? That will be the biggest reason but it's probably just easier/cheaper that way. It makes my life easier with only one as well.

Judging people by their clothing and speech patterns is too but interviewers seem to find it quite effective.

When you get to the bottom of your email, it's there. It's coloured in to make it easier to see, What's the problem?

What sort of time scale are you thinking of?
1 year - unlikely/No
5 years - vaguely possible but more likely to grow as it spreads around the world that people in the US are not aware of.
10 years - possible but it will be along with FB and some other things incorrectly labelled a social media like Twitter, Reddit and so on
20 years and beyond - probably but the tech world will be unrecognisable anyway.

Every computer idea will fail in the end so just saying that "it will" is about as meaningful as many politicians promises to help the poor or to keep away from rent boys.

Do You have a Google account? Then you have Google+.
Do you have a Gmail address? Then you have Google+.
Do you have access to any Google service that is specifically yours (even search)? Then you have Google+.and every other service

It's all one big system. Some services are restricted by location - Google Music for example. If you have one service, you do not have to sign up for anything else. Just sign in. There's nothing sneaky about it. If you don't want some, don't use them. If you don't have anything in Google Music, you don't have to listen to it. If you don't post on Google+ I promise not to reply...