> Nobody anticipated the immense variety of uses that would be dreamed up for the internet, Mr Keenan observes, and the same may apply to... ...any idea you ca

> Nobody anticipated the immense variety of uses that would be dreamed up for the internet, Mr Keenan observes, and the same may apply to... ...any idea you can think of. It's always possible there are upsides to an idea that could not have been imagined beforehand. Technology is littered with them. But it's useful to have some sense of the probability of such upsides, and we can get some idea by looking at those from the past, such as the internet. The internet has been so successful because it provides communication, better than others in many respects. That's the benefit that makes it valuable to people; the specific technical features that produce it are secondary. There's a long history of improvements in communications technology that have been successful. There's even been the idea that the benefit of airline travel is communication (e.g. for business travel, a large segment). We can ask if seasteading provides communication - and also if any new idea we might have provides communication. If it does, it will likely enable many unanticipated uses that require communication, and could be as wildly successful as the internet.