Clearly I need to start a novel. ;)
It seems to me that energy- and energy aquisition-related mishaps and disasters are happening more and more frequently lately.
Maybe it’s a purely subjective thing, but I don’t like it.
Neither my wife nor I are apocalyptically minded, but it does make us feel awfully vulnerable. We’re both hoping to someday have a home that is more or less self-reliant, and that seems to be easier and easier to do every month.
Last night, I read the first short story in Metatropolis (this one by Jay Lake). It brings out the idea that as we reduce the massive costs of creating technology and ‘doing business’, it helps not just the people who create massive corporations, but individuals and small groups of people who can work together to make things that were unbelievable twenty or even ten years ago.
I’m glad to be an occasional part of the hackerspace community, where people get together, share knowledge and tools, and work together to create amazing things for all of us. I wonder if and when hackerspaces-as-such will make their way into future fiction. ‘course, Doctorow’s Makers is pretty close to that, but not quite what I want to see.