According to McLuhan, there have been very few new technologies, and many new uses for old technologies. The metaphysical issue, however, is that a computer allows you to be in two places at the same time. This creates unbearable tension.

If the technology revolution were a designed program, it would get poor grades. By analogy imagine a highway offramp for Dallas in New York City. As the current economy, which allows net designers to overcome, wily nily, all obstacles, collapses, as a result of it's own design flaws, the net will contract, into something more workable, and less ambitious, and more like the telephone with pictures. Terrorists living far away simply won't be able to dial up US military databases without going through regional connections. These limits are going be a matter of economics, because the economy we have now is completely wrong.

The second technology revolution will grant people food shelter and transportation for little or no money, almost free. Once that happens all current social, political, and religious conflict will disappear. No more competing for vital resources. It's a beautiful thing, but you can't dial it up with any telephone.

I remember thinking, they make loans at below Prime Rate? How do I get one of those?

Forget your carbon emissions for a moment, the price of tortillas has tripled. The poor in Mexico, deprived of their lucrative US jobs, are now home, if they weren't detained by the Bush Fascists in Immigration prisons. Their families back home are now facing poverty. Terrorists blew up a main Pemex line not long ago. The US has a number of detention camps in this country, sitting empty, waiting for the exodus of Mexican refugees. Why would Bush want to forment a revolution in Mexico?

A power struggle could only boost the influence of US corporations in that country, a great source of labor, and other mineral assets. Secondly Bush wants to create the North American currency, and orphan out our worthless dollars, in the exchange. Third the Republicans see all of Latin America as a leftist hell hole, certain to go terrorist, and sooner rather than later.

Ethanol is a dodge, like Iraq was a dodge, (for Iran), like the stock market and the economy are a dodge, (to further the privatization of Social Security, and steal that money once for all, no IOU's this time). That none of it works doesn't mean you aren't stuck with a phony program, the wrong war, or a bubble economy.

Adam Smith's idea's are not counterpoint to his neoconservative equivalent, they simply underline managements current need to downgrade, or dumb down the labor force. The means for doing this are provided by technology, primarily. Properly designed companies, virtually run themselves. The real creativity is at the macro level, where companies are bought and sold, and CEO's who understand little about the product they make, create business models which succeed. Microsoft is an average technology company, and a hugely successful business. One can argue they are anti-technology, because they buy new technologies simply to keep them off the market.

The point of automation is that business requires fewer workers, and the job requires less physical work, and less education. This means ulitmately that the world is overpopulated, as we thought it was fifty years ago. Now we have to get rid of some of these people, who put an undue strain on resources, and quality of life, and you want to start giving them protein shakes? More likely the powers to be will start handing out Kool Aid, before the current generation has come of age.

Clinton is already campaigning for Republican swing votes. When are you going to figure out that you have been sold down the river.

Hollywood has always been a shill for fantasy riches, which was their trademark in the 1930's. Movies on that level are about product placement. Counterpoint to the process is the globally synchronized drive to join the world wide consumer market. American movies are actually past the point of diminishing returns in their intrinsic, revolutionary value, (advertising for the American way of life).

Deconstructing that image is the current counter-revolution, what you call dumbing down. The primary icon of consumer wealth is New York City. L.A. and Hollywood are nowhere near as ostentatious.. Destroying New York City is nothing new, watch the original Mothra, to see. Postwar Japan was sceptical of American materialism, but that film might just as well have been made in the modern Hollywood.

For now we must assume that offshore viewers are more intelligent, have more money, and share some of the same values Americans share. The message also works on those who have yet to share in the wealth.

You could argue that Hollywood forestalled a revolution in this country, in the 30's. Will 3-D reenactments of the destruction of New York have some ritual value to an audience deprived of the wealth in the images they see on the screen? Hollywood is nothing, if they are not adaptive, and exploiting self loathing in moviegoers in these third world slums would seem to be a constant theme here . I hate myself for being poor, to paraphrase Scarlett O'Hara..

As is usual in this kind of thing, a greater force trumps any desire on the part of a few Hollywood businessmen to market a particular strategy. Hollywood has proven itself capable of revolution, or counter revolution. They can profit in any market, it seems, when they just follow the broader trends. It's really when Hollywood tries to buck the trend that the product suffers.

Over chicken cordon bleu and Black Forest gateau, the talk was of volatile stock markets. “Sure, I’m worried about it – I’ve lost a couple of hundred thousand dollars in the past few weeks,” said Merle Widmer, vice-chairman of the Peoria county board.

I've lost a couple hundred thousand dollars???

There's a whole lot more pain, recriminations, and accountability, left in this thing, before we hit bottom..