First President!

So if in 100 years' time Europe is a single unified country and a major world superpower, are European kids going to learn in school that Herman Van Rompuy was their country's first president? Or will he be more a Peyton Randolph sort of figure - the first president of the Continental Congress in what would become the USA, who no one remembers?

The Future of IT

Charles Stross has some smart comments up on the near future of computing. Nominally it's all about the future of gaming, but really it's all about computer technology in general between now and, say, 2030.

For the past few years I've been trying to write science fiction about the near future, and in particular about the future of information technology. I've got a degree in computer science from 1990, which makes me a bit like an aerospace engineer from the class of '37, but I'm not going to let that stop me.

Previously, when I thought of Stross' nonfictional speculation about the future, I thought of his essay on precisely why space colonization will probably never be affordable and feasible for large numbers of people. It depressed me, as I'm sure it depressed lots of people who grew up on good old-fashioned space-oriented science fiction. Especially since the bastard is probably right about everything.

But his essay on the future of IT makes me all excited and optimistic about human progress again.