The great space elevator collapsed, and humanity squeezed through that cultural bottleneck like toothpaste from its tube - extra white, in concept if not colour. A radical attempt at a social autoclave. Not just a clean start, but a sterile one. How can corporations made up entirely of people be so blind to the nature of people, one has to wonder. The petri dish flourishes wild and exotic counter-culture. The internet allows for an infinite nesting of subcultures that split like fissile atoms into equally unstable states, split again. Technology allows for new and radical forms of self-expression and self-realization. And the androids are always there to remind you; There are more ways to be a person than to be human. All this, and the mainstream journalists wouldn't know a good story if it crawled up their ass and bit them. Stories that need to be found, heard, told. Someone ought to do it. Welcome to Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country