Sublime

The media net was designed from the ground up to provide privacy and security, so that people could use it to transfer money. That's one reason the nation-states collapsed—as soon as the media grid was up and running, financial transactions could no longer be monitored by governments, and the tax collection systems got fubared. So if the old IRS, f

The only straight line running through the Alleghenies was the interstate highway, and there was a law against laying fiber along the interstate highway.

a “meshnet,” where users are paid to contribute bandwidth to a low-cost network of Wi-Fi–connected users who get to bypass the cable

All these elements combined—an onboard democracy, with separation of powers; equitable compensation plans; insurance policies in the event of catastrophic injuries—meant that a pirate ship in the late 1600s and early 1700s operated both outside the law of European nation-states and, in a real sense, ahead of those laws. The pirates were vanguards a