I just returned from George Gilder's ninth annual Telecosm conference, which featured Ray Kurzweil, author of The Singularity is Near (2005), Chris Anderson of Wired and The Long Tail, Steve Forbes of Forbes, and numerous corporate and financial types.

It was a firehose of information, pumped through a two-day long pipe at jet speed.

It was pleasant to be at a session which focused on reality -- what is the technology, where is it going, and how can we make money out of it? In contrast, Washington seems to consist mostly of over-lapping imaginary worlds conjured up by government officials, whose beliefs never get marked to market because they are both exempt from market processes and surrounded by people whose major interest is in peddling some special delusion of their own.