One of the scarrier tasks someone can set is guessing where we’re going from here in the long term. Over at Byte, Jon Udell’s latest collumn —Where We Go From Here— attempts to do that for consciousness and human evolution in the context of the internet and the rapid increase in the power of computers. It's an interesting read.

Looking a little closer in time, nanotechnology has begun to trickle into the popular consciousness through episodes of the various Star Trek franchises. Interestingly, the Treks may only be slightly ahead of the reality. MIT’s Technology Review has an overview of medical research involving nanotechnology. One of the applications the article talks about is using the technology to hide substances designed to repair the body so that the immune system doesn’t attack. What they don't touch on is mis-use of the technology. The most obvious one is modifying it to carry a virus or other deadly agent. And you thought nuclear weapons were scary…

And then there's the present… the President is prosposing new initatives to fight those mean "cyberterrorists". The few acts that have occured have mostly amounted to the equivalent of grafitti, but that seems to be enough to scare Washington. The good news is that the effort seems to be focused on protecting federal resources and getting personel to help in the effort. Privacy concerns still seem only partially addressed, though. The White House press release, a transcript of the White House press briefing and the White House "National Plan for Information Systems Protection" are available. Additional Coverage: ZDNet.