For years the electricity utilities have been threatening to become the network of choice for all users, especially domestic ones. And it makes sense, electricity is one service/ good that requires every customer to be connected via a large diameter conductive physical link. Now here is a network that carries content, content that can kill you if you aren't careful. If it can carry 240 volts, it can carry any kind of information we care to think of. We've been promised cheap, fast broadband access via the wall socket for nearly a decade now and it hasn't happened, yet. But the near ubiquity of the network continues to be attractive and the idea that you can get the information and the power to run the device from the same plug, a bit like a souped up USB Really, is seductive.

Now, BP in California are going another step and actually marketing the distributed, networked power station. For years the utilities fought the idea that people should not only be allowed to generate their own power, but if they produced more than they needed, they should be able, in essence, to sell it back to the utility by having it drive the charge meter backwards.

BP have finally woken up to the idea that this is a better idea for a sustainable future than the old client/ server model of power generation and distribution.

Their "Home Solutions" deal not only provides a 50% discount on the cost of the installation, but includes the repurchase deal for those using less than they produce. Now, given that highly interconnected networks such as those in western post industrial societies are both highly resistant to failure, and degrade really badly when they do, the next thing is to distribute the control and management to local hubs so that a failure in one part of the network will be less likely to cascade through the system.

Keeping watch. Edwin land said that creativity was the sudden cessation of stupidity, maybe some is happening inside BP.

OK, so 3G comes in for a power of stick about whether or not it is a viable technology ( a friend of mine refers to it as the step you skip on the way to 4G) and, above all, whether it can be made to pay. By the look of it the answers are Yes and No.

This story from the BBC talks about a computer demo and training bus on the Isle of man that uses a 3G phone to connect a whole busload, 20 machines, to the net, giving faster connections than the kids in terrestrial cable networks get in their classrooms. One machine in the bus acts as a server to all the others and it all runs through the 3G phone. Score one for "Does the technology work?"

Of course, the Telco business model is that

1. we will all need 20 times the bandwidth sufficient for a classroom full of kids
2. We will need it available all the time
3. We can afford US$600 for the connection device and
4. pay whatever it takes for the traffic

I've been saying in various ways for a while that the conceptual model of the Internet is to transfer control of our information environment from the producer to the recipient. Its invested in the whole structure and process of the Internet, down to the protocols, or up from them, whichever way you view it.

Now Eric Norlin has come up with a name for it; The John Perry Barlow Paradox which, in a nutshell, holds that "The Internet, in its current form, moves everything that touches it toward the public domain."

Of course. If each individual user of the net increasingly controls their information environment, then effectively the control has shifted to the commons, locking it away becomes progressively harder and, as I also hold, profits are significantly generated from control. This undermines many business plans and corporate strategies; a reality that many companies, especially media businesses have not fully awoken to yet.

There are a heap of links on this subject at the moment, I'll pull some together.

Its not the technology, its how it is used and the changes it engenders in people's ;lives, and those changes are real. Go back half a dozen years and ask yourself if this would have been predictable from the conditions of the time.

One in two people online in Europe has asked someone out on a date via e-mail and excuses such as 'I lost your e-mail' are increasingly being used to avoid unwanted attentions.

Nearly half of Europeans says they have sent or received an e-mail only invite to a party or social event.

A third only provide their e-mail address when they meet someone, compared to 19% who provide their telephone number.

And more and more people are announcing life-changing news such as the birth of a baby, a wedding or a new job online.

"The study brings home the powerful effect that the online medium is having on people's lives," said Philip Rowley, President of AOL Europe.

"It is transforming how they come together, organise their social lives and even share personal news. There is no mistaking the profound impact it is having on our social norms," he said.

Virtually everyone online in France, the UK and Germany use e-mail to communicate with friends and family. And a third say it has helped them find or reconnect with someone they had lost touch with.

The reality of the net as a powerful tool of organisation and co-ordination has been brought home not only by the anti-war protests of the last month, but actions such as the Virtual march on Washington which have been entirely online events. Problem is that under proposed legislation, they could be classed as terrorism.

The justice ministers of the European Union have agreed on laws intended to deter computer hacking and the spreading of computer viruses. But legal experts say the new measures could pose problems because the language could also outlaw people who organize protests online, as happened recently, en masse, with protests against a war in Iraq.

The agreement, reached last week, obliges all 15 member states to adopt a new criminal offense: illegal access to, and illegal interference with an information system. It calls on national courts to impose jail terms of at least two years in serious cases.

Critics from the legal profession say the agreement makes no legal distinction between an online protester and terrorists, hackers and spreaders of computer viruses that the new laws are intended to trap.