Cyborgs vs. rooms, two visions for the future of computing

One of the other important points about rooms and cyborgs is what partial participation looks like.

If I don't like the room, I'm able to get up and leave. It might be difficult and annoying, and I might have to end up in the middle of the woods or desert or something, but I can do it. (Yes, we are increasingly making this harder and harder to do, by cyborging "the system" itself -- think things like the demise of cash, or the requirements for digital ID cards, or ... -- but you get the idea.)

If I'm a cyborg, how do I leave? Can I leave? Do I even control myself anymore? Being a cyborg sounds great if I control my "wetware". Which I probably do not. (Do you control the computing device you're reading this message on? Really? The Linux kernel being open source might be really nice (it is really nice), but even if you have the de jure ability to control it, do you have the practical ability to do so? And then there's the hardware. Any way you trace the hardware, you'll end up with quartz wafers from Spruce Pine. Do you have any way to replicate that?) There is no way in hell I'd want to be someone else's cyborg, which means that with the state of the tech world, I don't want to be a cyborg at all.

This ultimately looks like the good old Centralization / Decentralization Pendulum playing out over and over and over again (Mainframes gave way to Personal Computers which gave way to Client/Server architecture to Mobile devices to Cloud to yet another neverending pendulum swing).

Keep up, please?

Ok the visitor cursors are really something else, it's unnerving. Super cool though.