it occurs to me that a shift in scale and communication has something to do with our ills.  this is not well thought out, just a wild notion that came to me while reading your riff on 'napsterisation', but I consider that... at the village mercado level, the zocolo, the bazaar, most people are known to each other and gossip and rumour travel like wildfire (i.e., a very rapid and ubiquitous reputation service).  knowledge is largely shared and equalised, most people can tell a good canteloupe from a bad 'un and they buy their meat still squawking so they can tell how old it is and whether it's healthy.

when trade becomes long-haul, global, etc. the lines of communication are slower and also expensive, so only the elite have full knowledge of provenance and process and quality, and the proles and customers are working in an information vacuum.  the products we buy and consume have had their meanings and histories amputated.  what the internet would do, if truly ubiquitised (wifi everywhere, $10 palmtops in every pocket, open source OS, net neutrality -- dream on, but let's go with the thought experiment), is restore the village gossipnet to the global market, so that producer and consumer once again become dynamic, individual, and shifting roles instead of a fixed, cumbersome feudal hierarchy and hierophancy.

if this notion of popular communications lagging elite transport and finance mobility by several centuries, but starting to catch up, has any validity, then it would explain the sudden panic of the elites and their attempts to throttle the internet.  I am watching wimax with interest -- the uunet of the future?  decentralisation is imho the only way to get out from under the command/control freaks.

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...