The death of the 'death of distance' Re: [Dgcchat] Liberty Reserve Raided

[R.A. Hettinga]

At 12:48 AM +0100 10/20/07, Graham Kelly wrote:
>Could you take a journey over to LR office,
>and enquire?

"90% of life is showing up." -- Woody Allen

"Just as the principal output device of the 'paperless' office was actually
the laser printer, the principal output device of the internet and its
so-called 'death of distance' is actually the airline seat and the hotel
conference room." -- um, me, circa 1995 or so, if not exactly in those
words.

...and don't even get me started on the pipe dream of using the internet
for jurisdiction shopping, or 'regulatory arbitrage', or whatever the
buzz-de-jour is these days. Until we change the rules with technology,
everything will continue to become more and more illegal, everywhere, all
the time.

If you think Kurzweil's 'singularity' will be fun, wait until you see
regulatory ubiquity.


Cheers,
RAH

-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'