"Pie in the sky" may turn out to be a necessity if there's to be any sense made of CO2 emission controls, increased cost of road transport (about $14 billion per annum or more, currently -- about half the total cost of the NBN for government), increased costs of city development and housing, increased rents in CBDs.
Some bosses don't want it. Some bosses didn't want computers. Some bosses didn't want the 40 hour week. Some bosses didn't want limits on child labour. Some bosses wanted slaves.

Some governments eventually tell some bosses to get their acts together -- if shareholders don't do it to them beforehand.

Don't know who your friends are, or what they do. You don't seem to rate them highly as intelligent users. But the traffic figures for the internet take them in and eat them up.

Some Australian internet stats:

Sept 2006 to Dec 2008 -- download figures only :

36 148 "million MBs" => 81,352 "million MBs".

Then in the latest year, in TB, June 2009 to 2010

99,249 => 155,503

So it doesn't matter much what your friends are doing. Someone else is doing a lot more in their place. And again, that's only downloads.

Why is that increase going to stop in the next decade or so? So far, every time the capacity for processing and communication has increased, the willingness to use that capacity has increased with it (and beyond).

"99,249 => 155,503"

Yes, but how much of this volume represents real information? Instead, what people are getting are blown-up web-sites, with more ads, more gimmicks, more nonsense, where all we need is factual information that could be summarized in no more than 1KB of text.

It's all just a total waste. You can get all you need with 1/100th the capacity, including working from home... oops, there is just one exception - entertainment, living in virtual reality: wouldn't it be simpler and cheaper to legalise drugs?

Yuyustu:

Apart from a bit of an intellectual snob's attitude to entertainment, you appear to claim effectiveness for 1K of text over other means of communication.

These days, after working in what you might call "entertainment", (which last time I looked, was a legitimate industry with all kinds of benefits for productivity in other national industries) I work in technical communication, following a spell or two in education.

It so happens that the most effective way of training and communicating in many complex areas is clearly that which comes in an "entertaining" format, otherwise known as audio/visual and movie formats.

It beats the hell out of text for complex issues. And if you have a look at the often-despised YouTube, you'll now find hundreds of those apparently-awful "entertainments" actually provide handy and often if not always, effective ways of explaining complex issues or tasks. They allow a level of comprehension that beats the hell out of 1 Kb of text on many of the increasingly-complex issues. They're educational.

Check out the stuff loaded on CDs these days for education courses, and pause to wonder why it has pictures. Check out something like Scientific American and count the pictures and diagrams.

Or better still, just try beating an animated picture of some DNA strands with a string of words explaining basics of how DNA works.

Ideally, of course, if you can, you do both. But you'd be outright reckless and pretty thick-headed to insist you can always do it better with text. That's just the Luddite approach gone silly.

It's a bit too late for lovely watermelon "back to nature" approaches to society. Bits of the future are already here, and work.
We now need to keep them working for us -- and for things like better education, more effective communication, and better ways of working and living without burning up energy and pouring out CO2.

Pencils aren't going to be the answer anymore.

'So it doesn't matter much what your friends are doing. Someone else is doing a lot more in their place. '

So let them get a faster line connected and pay for it themselves.

'the willingness to use that capacity has increased with it (and beyond).'

The take-up rate of the NBN in Tasmania is abysmal. People are happy enough with ADSL let alone ADSL2. There is no willingness.

The majority of older people 60-90 WONT EVER use the internet let alone ADSL2 let alone fibre. Perhaps in 40 years time when these people have died, it would be worth putting it into EVERY home, but not at the moment. The capacity we have well exceeds what is needed for the residential market.

I cant believe you think granpa writing his 2 emails a week needs a fibre connection. There are at least a million households in the country that will never use the service even if it was free, and certainly millions more who will never pay for it. There's people still using dial up you know, perfectly happy. There's many many people who could have ADSL2 but they don't want to pay for it so they stay with ADSL.

Why do you think people who don't even want ADSL2 will want fibre?

"Apart from a bit of an intellectual snob's attitude to entertainment"

As the government does not place bread and butter on my table, does not fund our clothing and shelter, nor supplies free alcohol and heroin, why discriminate in favour of entertainment-consumers/addicts?

Armchair-Entertainment takes people away from being active in real life - perhaps the only life they will ever get, and instead live through others (including fictional others). It is sad. I wholly support the right of others to make bad choices, but why encourage it? at least if they have to pay for that with their own dollars, they may avoid the higher personal costs.

"an animated picture of some DNA strands"

That's picking up on sporadic cases where a picture helps, needles in a hay-stack. Even there, 30 frames/second do not make it more educational, 1-2 frames/second would suffice for the intended purpose. Obviously, these cases are easily handled by ADSL, in fact even dialup. Most of the time, pictures only distract and waste the time of the reader/student, which must scroll down to find the actual information. As for diagrams, if they are represented as lines/arcs/shapes instead of as an image, most of them would also fit in 1KB. I know because I've produced many diagrams on a graphic serial-terminal (VT340).

"more effective communication"

That comes by being concise and to-the-point.

"better ways of working and living without burning up energy and pouring out CO2"

Breeding less, consuming less, simplifying life, being content to spend time with oneself, one's family and one's local community.

"Pencils aren't going to be the answer anymore"

I mainly use ball-point pens, but erasable pencils are still useful to mark music-scores, as different conductors (or even the same conductor on different occassions) often give different instructions.

--
Houellebecq,

"Why do you think people who don't even want ADSL2 will want fibre?"

Because otherwise the thought-police would get them and send them to re-education camps.

"The majority of older people 60-90 WONT EVER use the internet...<snip> Perhaps in 40 years time when these people have died, it would be worth putting it into EVERY home, but not at the moment. The capacity we have well exceeds what is needed for the residential market."

On what possible basis can you claim that ? Will people turning 60 in 10 years suddenly stop and go away knitting? Really?

"I cant believe you think granpa writing his 2 emails a week needs a fibre connection."

Who says its about your condescending old idea of grandpa and the Internet As We Know It Today? Check the NBN publications: it's clear it's about services already being used in other countries in health and home security and aged care as well as allowing for VOIP growth etc.

We can't afford carers for the aged and need some fast alternatives. Remote monitoring can help, and is being used overseas. And it's cheaper than many alternatives.

We're short of GPs in country towns, and remote AV consultations become possible, and are also being used elsewhere.

We've got specialists who can't get out to regional areas but could possibly work on diagnosis through digital imagery etc without leaving the home office. Ditto.

Older people at home won't get any use out of +those+ systems ?
Please explain.

"There's people still using dial up you know, perfectly happy."

Perfectly? I think not. Market numbers say the opposite.

Household dial-up subscribers ISP stats for Australia
Sep 2006 -> June 2010
2,472,000 -> 623,000 -- A 74.5% decrease approx.

compared with the same period overall increase in all subscribers:

6,657,000 -> 9,569,000 ---- A 43.7% increase!

"Why do you think people who don't even want ADSL2 will want fibre?"

See above for a start, then go check all the other reasons listed in the NBN papers. And stop thinking that nothing changes, when damn near everything does: you're starting to make it plain where the old grandpa thinking is actually coming from!