Columns

Well, you don't need many qualifications to poke a stick in your eye either, but that doesn't mean we're all going to do it. I'd rather go to the store and purchase my software, to be honest. So much simpler than sifting through an inbox full of viral spam, trying to figure out whether 'roger329 says try WhackMyWidget 0.7.901b-RC55!' means (a) my friend Roger, who is clueless about all inanimate objects, is giving me the benefit of his software recommendations, or (b) I'm about to click a link to a fake Viagra shop run by the Estonian mafia.

Big visions are all very well, but sometimes they come from overlooking the answers in front of your nose. Privately owned hardware running professionally designed applications that can't be halted on someone else's whim, connected passively by a content-agnostic network that belongs to everybody and nobody - that seems about as good a system as we're going to get, even if it does mean turning the central heating down a bit.