You have it pretty much the other way around. The reason we have to rely on all this stuff like * NFS, CIFS, etc for networked files * Kerberos for network wi

You have it pretty much the other way around. The reason we have to rely on all this stuff like * NFS, CIFS, etc for networked files * Kerberos for network wide auth * LDAP for network wide user management * basically all http abuse for music/Video streaming etc. is because our OSes still follow the 70s One-Big-Machine-Many-Dumb-Teletypes-Paradigm. Basically all our devices, from the biggest server to the smallest Smartphone, think they are a Mainframe. The rest, including networking in general, is fumbled on top. This is ugly at best but becomes a real PITA as soon as you have to deal with a couple of machines(BYOD or not). Exactly because the computing landscape has changed from mainframes to networks of desktops was plan9 developed. An OS where it doesn't matter anymore if a resource is local or on the network. Following your line of thought, since computers become more and more capable, soon we wont need networks at all. EDIT: Btw. resources here means anything, from all HW devices to the Text in an open editor. Every file can be exported and in plan9 really everything is a file.