"Real Western Around Here"

Bill Kittredge, a writer friend and mentor, used to say, "It's about to get real western around here."
Bill used his metaphor as a way of explaining what he perceived to be crazy, wild and unexplainable behavior.

The Internet can be perceived as "real western" in the sense that regulation, if it exists at all, is unpredictable, rather localized, certainly not comprehensive, impulsive, and subject to vigilate-like maneuvering based on violent emotions, paranoia, outright crime, and an unfettered entrepreneurial spirit.

The West was settled thanks to a dominating urge for expansionism and supposed opportunity, based to a large extent on the concept of Manifest Destiny, as well as various social, economic, and political factors. Those same forces, and the same perception of entitlement and captialistic perrogatives seem to underlie the development of the Internet and ICTs.

Significantly, we can foresee drawbacks to exponential expansion via the Internet that parallel the movement across the "wild, wild West". The perceived drawbacks of both expansive developments are based on the fact that there was (is) no real plan, no documented long-term vision, and no extablished rules of development and operation.