In The Future...

-We Will Drive Cars That Can Fly
-We Will Live In Giant Geodesic Domes
-We Will Have 50 Megabit Per Second Internet Connections Wired To Our Caravans

Well, the first one is a way off yet. But the last two - Welcome to Japan.

In Australia, the fastest connection theoretically available is around 20 Mbit/Sec, but you need to be camped next door to the telephone exchange to get it. so the reality is usually somewhat less. And its only available on a small percentage of exchanges. In my space here in Sysdney, I'm lucky enough to be connected to one of those special exchanges, and as a result i get a blisteringly fast 8Mbit/sec. by contrast, the average houshold broadband connection is 512k/sec - one sixteenth of what I get here.

Kakizakai-sensei has generously found out about getting the internet plumbed into my caravan in Chichibu. The result: by the time I arrive, the giant manga-style organic tangle of fibre-optic cables should have sprouted out of the ground and enveloped the van, reality will be a relative point of view, and the van will exist half in this world, and half floating in the twinkling data-sphere of the greater internet, running at speeds a hundred times what a regular net connection here in Australia gives you.

It boggles the mind - this is not a datacentre in the heart of tokyo. This is a caravan, on the edge of a small town in the mountains of Japan.

Casts our national network here in Aus into pretty sad light, doesn't it...