Moving to Mars

I'll believe in people settling Mars at about the same time I see people setting the Gobi Desert. The Gobi Desert is about a thousand times as hospitable as Mars and five hundred times cheaper and easier to reach. Nobody ever writes "Gobi Desert Opera" because, well, it's just kind of plonkingly obvious that there's no good reason to go there and live. It's ugly, it's inhospitable and there's no way to make it pay. Mars is just the same, really. We just romanticize it because it's so hard to reach.

Says Bruce Sterling, who is right in every way.

Oh, the technology

Lagging the usual 5 years behind the times, I am sitting on Lilian's sofa, feeling wonderfully excited because I'm connected to the internet without the aid of wires!

(Actually there are many, many wires connecting the flat to the internet, but there is no wire connecting this laptop to the router, about 15 feet away. Although it is plugged into the power cable)