In the early 90's, those go-go days, the egregious Esther Dyson together with some other overpaid theoreticians, proclaimed 'the overthrow of matter'.
Here it is the Year of our Lord 2008 in a bold new century, and we're still pushing coal laboriously upstream in order to fuel the power stations that move our electrons around. Watching these barges shoving along, it looks like they are going uphill. In several senses they are I suppose, but it's still odd to watch.
