Bruce Sterling (11/20/2001):

You know what I want? I don't want a National ID Card. I want a Global Coalition Visa.

Like it or not, we've got a huge global diaspora now. It is a fact of life. Nations with stupid and corrupt politics have seen their clever people brain- drained away, to places where the cops don't shake you down twice a day. And jet-setters go everywhere. And properly so. If you're in a true global society, then you spend a lot of your time among aliens. Quite often you are the alien. You might notice that even Al Qaeda is a genuinely multinational group. They gravitated to wicked, lawless places like Sudan, Chechnya and Afghanistan, where the locals shoot you if you ask for a badge.

But what about all us bright, shiny, world-trading jet setters, huh? There are thirty percent fewer Yankees in Europe this Christmas, and that is bad. Let me pose the problem this way. If I am going into a Japanese restaurant in Japan, I would rather like to be able to haul out some gizmo and flash it at my fellow civilians, and have these kindly people understand with a high degree of likelihood that I am not a mass murderer. On the contrary, I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately.

A platinum VISA card and a five-hundred-dollar suit will almost do that, but those are too easy to forge and steal, plus they are not very democratic. The UN should get together on this. We should have a high level summit about digital hardware support for the crippled tourist economy. Fear and ill treatment shut down tourism faster than anything short of open warfare. That is bad for all of us. Killing off tourism harms our civilization and impoverishes our cultures. People in civilized states shouldn't routinely treat one another as criminal suspects. I don't want to get done-over for three hours every time I get off a plane in London. When I go to London, I go with empty suitcases. I don't plan to stay, but I am better news for the London economy than a lot of the people who live there.

They should know all that that before I get off the plane. My arrival is excellent news for Britain, so I should be treated that way. If this is a new kind of war, I don't want to be the evil guy hunkered down in the bunker; I want to fly with the boys from Air Assault. I want one of those handy crypto-style Friend-or-Foe IDs.

These people who normally meet me whenever I am an alien, they don't need to know my nationality, my home address or my shoe size. They just need to know that, despite being alien, I'm sort-of okay.

I want a democratic, citizen-to-citizen device that will bridge those social barriers and language barriers. I think we could invent devices and means of verification that would strengthen the global social fabric that terrorism wants to rip. It wouldn't be easy or simple, but it's not beyond our ingenuity. Our social capital sustains all civilized societies, and it is all about trust. So let's invent new methods of trust.

I added bold to the last sentence because I think this is the mission statement for building out federation systems.

The state of the airline industry is a travesty.  Today United announced that they are joining American in charging a fee for even the first bag of checked luggage.  Combined with the ban on liquids that makes it hard to carry on anything, you are forced to pay up.  This is on top of the already jacked up prices and fuel surcharges they are already charging.  They also charge if you want to fly stand by now, extra for exit seats, aisles, etc, etc.  It is not one airline worse than another, they are all pretty bad. 

Today's travel nightmare though comes courtesy of Continental Airlines.  I rarely fly Continental because in coach I find their seats are to close together and my knees get crushed.  But flying home from Denver today, they were the cheapest so I booked the flight. 

I was scheduled to be on a 4:50 flight out of Denver into Houston.  An hour layover, an 8:55 flight from Houston to Ft Lauderdale and I would get me home around midnight.  Long day for sure.  So I finished up my meetings and stuff early in Boulder and saw that Continental had a 2:30 flight from Denver to Houston and a 7:10 connection to Ft Lauderdale that would get me in around 10:20pm.  I left StillSecure HQ around noon and was at Denver airport by about 12:45.  I went to the Continental counter and asked to get on the earlier flight.  Because I am a platinum medallion member of Delta, as a Sky Team member, I am an elite plus level passenger on Continental. In days gone by that would qualify me for same day ticket changes for free.  Not anymore it doesn't!  I don't understand what the price of fuel has to do with charging me for same day ticket changes.  Anyway, they said I could fly stand by for free until June 17th, when even standby is going to cost an extra fee (again they blamed it on fuel costs).

So they put me on standby and told me my luggage would go on the earlier flight.  I then went to the 2:30 flights gate and waited.  The ticket counter agent told me about 20 minutes before take off that they only had me as a silver medallion and due to my low status I was far down the list and would not make the flight.  My luggage would though.  OK, so I will hang at the airport and work a few hours.  Just before the plane takes off they call my name and tell me to wait at the end of the jetway.  They are checking the plane and if there is a seat I can take it.  I get the last seat on the plane, a middle seat. 

I arrive at Houston and proceed to the gate for the 7:10 flight to Ft Lauderdale.  I check in with the agent and she tells me the folks in Denver only put me on standby for the Denver Houston flight and I am not on stand by for the Ft Lauderdale flight.  She can put me on and I will probably make it, but my luggage will be going on the later flight.  Now mind you I can see the plane I just got off of out the window and could have gone to the jetway and told the guys unloading the luggage to grab my bag.  Not wanting to wait two hours in Ft Lauderdale late at night for my luggage to arrive and not wanting to drive down the next day to pick it up I say thanks, but no thanks and decide to wait another two hours for the later flight that my luggage will be on.

I board my 8:55 flight as scheduled and we take off headed for Ft Lauderdale, due to land at 12:15 or so.  The plane is hot as heck and about a half hour into the flight the pilot says that we have a pressurization problem and am turning back to Houston!  We turn back and upon arrival near Houston, he tells us we have too much fuel to land and will have to fly around to burn it off.  We have no air conditioning, it is hot as can be and they are telling me how much they charge because of the cost of fuel that they are now flying around in circles to burn off!

We land in Houston, they find another plane and we finally take off from Houston around 11:45 or so. I am writing this on the plane and am due to land about 2:30am. If I find my luggage came on the earlier flight I am going to kill someone.  In the meantime, I have had enough of Continental for a while and they won't see me on their planes very soon.

End of story, we landed around 2:45 and my luggage was waiting for me, having arrived on the earlier flight.  The Continental employee at the baggage claim will remember Alan Shimel for a while, as I gave him a piece of my mind.

The state of the airline industry is a travesty.  Today United announced that they are joining American in charging a fee for even the first bag of checked luggage.  Combined with the ban on liquids that makes it hard to carry on anything, you are forced to pay up.  This is on top of the already jacked up prices and fuel surcharges they are already charging.  They also charge if you want to fly stand by now, extra for exit seats, aisles, etc, etc.  It is not one airline worse than another, they are all pretty bad. 

Today's travel nightmare though comes courtesy of Continental Airlines.  I rarely fly Continental because in coach I find their seats are to close together and my knees get crushed.  But flying home from Denver today, they were the cheapest so I booked the flight. 

I was scheduled to be on a 4:50 flight out of Denver into Houston.  An hour layover, an 8:55 flight from Houston to Ft Lauderdale and I would get me home around midnight.  Long day for sure.  So I finished up my meetings and stuff early in Boulder and saw that Continental had a 2:30 flight from Denver to Houston and a 7:10 connection to Ft Lauderdale that would get me in around 10:20pm.  I left StillSecure HQ around noon and was at Denver airport by about 12:45.  I went to the Continental counter and asked to get on the earlier flight.  Because I am a platinum medallion member of Delta, as a Sky Team member, I am an elite plus level passenger on Continental. In days gone by that would qualify me for same day ticket changes for free.  Not anymore it doesn't!  I don't understand what the price of fuel has to do with charging me for same day ticket changes.  Anyway, they said I could fly stand by for free until June 17th, when even standby is going to cost an extra fee (again they blamed it on fuel costs).

So they put me on standby and told me my luggage would go on the earlier flight.  I then went to the 2:30 flights gate and waited.  The ticket counter agent told me about 20 minutes before take off that they only had me as a silver medallion and due to my low status I was far down the list and would not make the flight.  My luggage would though.  OK, so I will hang at the airport and work a few hours.  Just before the plane takes off they call my name and tell me to wait at the end of the jetway.  They are checking the plane and if there is a seat I can take it.  I get the last seat on the plane, a middle seat. 

I arrive at Houston and proceed to the gate for the 7:10 flight to Ft Lauderdale.  I check in with the agent and she tells me the folks in Denver only put me on standby for the Denver Houston flight and I am not on stand by for the Ft Lauderdale flight.  She can put me on and I will probably make it, but my luggage will be going on the later flight.  Now mind you I can see the plane I just got off of out the window and could have gone to the jetway and told the guys unloading the luggage to grab my bag.  Not wanting to wait two hours in Ft Lauderdale late at night for my luggage to arrive and not wanting to drive down the next day to pick it up I say thanks, but no thanks and decide to wait another two hours for the later flight that my luggage will be on.

I board my 8:55 flight as scheduled and we take off headed for Ft Lauderdale, due to land at 12:15 or so.  The plane is hot as heck and about a half hour into the flight the pilot says that we have a pressurization problem and am turning back to Houston!  We turn back and upon arrival near Houston, he tells us we have too much fuel to land and will have to fly around to burn it off.  We have no air conditioning, it is hot as can be and they are telling me how much they charge because of the cost of fuel that they are now flying around in circles to burn off!

We land in Houston, they find another plane and we finally take off from Houston around 11:45 or so. I am writing this on the plane and am due to land about 2:30am. If I find my luggage came on the earlier flight I am going to kill someone.  In the meantime, I have had enough of Continental for a while and they won't see me on their planes very soon.

End of story, we landed around 2:45 and my luggage was waiting for me, having arrived on the earlier flight.  The Continental employee at the baggage claim will remember Alan Shimel for a while, as I gave him a piece of my mind.

It started when I had to change my flight home for the trip this week.  The Expedia Corporate folks messed up the pricing and canceling of my first flight because their site was down, so it wound up costing 800 dollars more than it should have!  But I cannot miss the show, so had to eat it. I got to Ft Lauderdale airport this afternoon to find out my flight out was 45 minutes late.  That put my connection in Atlanta in jeopardy.  The agent checking me in (who took 45 minutes for the two people in front of me) put a big priority tag on my luggage because I am Platinum Medallion on Delta.  As he was doing that, I said to myself that is a kiss of death if I ever saw one.  I got to Atlanta to find out my connection was an hour late anyway and everything was fine, if you don't count landing in San Fran at 1am pacific time (4am east coast time) to late.  So I got on the plane and we are off to San Fran.  On the way there a woman on the plane had some medical problem, so when we landed there were paramedics waiting for the plane.  Though the woman appeared alright now, we had to wait for them to come on, exam her and take her off the plane.  About 20 minutes later, they let us off the plane.  Ok, now it is 1:30 in the morning pacific, 4:30am on my body clock.

I head down to baggage claim. I wait another 30 minutes for all of the luggage to come off the plane and don't you know it, my luggage with the big priority tag they put on it is not on the plane.  I stand on another line to make another claim.  They tell me that the first flight in tomorrow is due in at 10:58 am, I might have my luggage by noon if I am very lucky.  That is great, I am scheduled to be at the Americas Growth Capital Conference at 8:30am.  I am sure I will look great in my Levi jeans and denim shirt with sneakers! Not to mention using the cheap toiletries that the hotel gives the dredges who don't have their own deodorant.   Also what is the idea with hotels charging $12.95 a night for Internet access.  Shame on you San Francisco Hilton!

So far this is one hell of a conference and trip.  Can't tell you how happy I am to have come out here already.  The good news is that it can only get better, not sure how it can get worse.  More tomorrow.