CDR: Excerpt of Mark Summerfield's 'Letter from 2020'

[Trei, Peter]

http://www.osOpinion.com/Opinions/MarkSummerfield/MarkSummerfield3.html
[...]

I try to remember what it was like when I was a kid but it's
really difficult; the world has changed so much since
then. I found a paper book the other day that described the
rise and fall of something called the "Internet". It started
out with people putting up links on computers so that they
could follow the link and read things on other computers for
free. After it got to be popular, companies started to
create machines with lots of links that you could search to
find things of interest. But someone put up a link to
something illegal and got sued and had their machine shut
down. This happened a few times and people started to take
the links off their machines. The search engine companies
were the first to go and without them, you couldn't find
anything. Eventually no one put up links anymore because the
legal risk was too great. The important thing is that it
reduced terrorism. I'm not sure how it could have worked
anyway. Anything I write on my computer or any music I
create gets stored by Word.NET and Music.NET in encrypted
formats to protect my privacy. No one but me, Microsoft.NET
and the National Corporation can read or hear my stuff even
if they could link to it.

I shouldn't admit it, but sometimes I go to certain places
and speak to the subversives. I know its wrong but their
warped views on things have some kind of morbid
fascination. For example, I spoke to someone who claimed to
be a historian the other day. She had courage all right,
admitting to an illegal activity like that. I hadn't
understood why it was illegal until she explained. History,
she told me, gives you context. You can compare today with
some time in the past; ask questions like, "are people
better off", "look at the different forms of doing
business", "compare corporate records or the rights of
citizens" (I think she meant employees).
[...]