half-full or 3/4 empty

at a San Francisco dinner shindig, with a group of startup people, money people, and others in the subculture. The genetic effevescence was about remix culture, clean energy, 3d hacking, and the digital native generation.
I don’t know whether it is just me but every silver lining has a pretty heavy cloud. Clean energy is grand, especially if it can help compensate for the very large amounts of fossil fuel energy it takes to make our food. Remix culture is cool, except for the fact that it is largely illegal, and remixers could get priced out of the market in a non-net-neutral economy. Kids in the US will grow up with tech as a native language; and 50% of kids will be obese; and many will have fewer opportunities than their parents. People in the room felt free to snark about “your call may be monitored by the NSA”, but Senate Intel just voted not to investigate illegal spying. The polar bears are dying in the heat.
The short-term looks fun and interesting; the longer term looks murky.

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