One of the points about distractions is that everything that they do is destabilizing.

The level of ignorance is declining, and the ability to accumulate data and manipulate it for various ends is increasing.

Every passing year brings us more past futures. Here in Europe they had a Dark Age so extensive, radical and obliterative that everyone forgot how to speak Latin. It's counterproductive to blither on about "the" future. It's always somebody's future, and we're not who we used to be.

The future isn't just unwritten, it's unsearched.

Cloud computing seems to be following this evolutionary path: A - Internet backbone. B - Information Superhighway. C - The Net. D - The Web. E - The Cloud. F - "Ubiquity" G- ???

The future is unwritten. Cyberspace is the funhouse mirror of our own society, reflects our values and our faults, sometimes in terrifying exaggerations. It doesn't matter who you are today, if you don't show up in that mirror you are just not going to matter very much. Our kids have to show up in the mirror.

Don't become a well rounded person. Well rounded people are smooth and ull. Become a thoroughly spiky person.