> The internet tends to lock things in. More generally, a globally connected civilization locks things in, once they are sufficiently widespread. Barring an a

> The internet tends to lock things in. More generally, a globally connected civilization locks things in, once they are sufficiently widespread. Barring an apocalypse, our present is eternity. I'm always amused when I read science fiction that assumes in the future, Chinese will be the lingua franca, or that we'll have political offices modeled after Ancient Rome, or that there's a world government, or similar nonsense. To paraphrase O'Brien from 1984: "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a crony-capitalist, meme- and outrage-driven society that always seems on the brink of collapse but never actually does collapse – forever."