Each day, we look at everything that is going on in the Sandbox, searching for impactful projects, stories and ideas by Sandboxers. We then repost the most interesting, inspiring or brilliant stuff here on our blog.

Today Max Marmer shares his idea on how to make visions of the future more anchored. You can read Max’s original blog post here and connect with him on Twitter and Facebook.

Recently I have been exploring the ideas of Ken Wilber. His theories are fascinating, but I’ve found when discussing his ideas with friends many have met them with great skepticism.

I agree he is not perfect. And after exploring others critique of him on the web, and thinking about my own experience of his text, I decided my biggest problems with Ken Wilber are twofold.

1) He implies too much consensus.

2) He does not engage in enough public discourse about his ideas.

However, it’s important to note that he has not built his theories, as far as I can tell on anything that is patently false. I think the reason he does this is expediency. His books are already 800 pages. If he had to discuss the debate on each of his assumptions that would be it’s own book unto itself, where he wouldn’t get the chance to present any new ideas, and that would hardly be worth the read.

I realized this problem is endemic to many of the authors and thinkers I’m most fascinated by: Clare Graves, John Smart, Kevin Kelly, Ray Kurzweil, Don Riso etc. They are all building models to better explain the past and present and predict the future, but some of their assumptions are based on scientific fact and some of their assumptions are unproven. And it’s often hard to tell which are which. Furthermore, some of their assumptions are built on top of their unproven assumptions.

Most people are not comfortable with any uncertainty, much less multiple levels of uncertainty, which is one of the main reasons why many of the theories of the authors I’ve listed above do not have much mainstream acceptance in the general public or academia.

However, we as a society cannot dismiss these people and their models. They are the visionaries who are attempting to climb the tallest mountain they can find and see farther than any man has seen before. Society needs to be giving these people more attention and resources, not less. We just need a better mechanism for separating the wheat from the chaff, and shifting much of the burden of truth verification off the individual reader. What we need is more transparency. We need to be able to more easily identify shaky mountains from ones based on solid ground. And we need to be able to separate the scientifically validated ground from the visions in the air. We need to make our models more explicit. We need more rigorous futurism.

I can imagine a tool that could provide a standardized format for:

1) Listing the core assumptions of the model, and separating the scientifically validated facts from the hypotheses.

2) The bold conclusions that follow if all the assumptions and presuppositions are true.

3) Monitoring and debating the scientific validity of all of the assumptions as the scientific community runs new experiments and gains new evidence.

4) Followers to discuss alternative theories based on the same set of assumptions.

5) Authors or other leading proponents of the theory to share their thoughts and analysis in real time as new evidence rolls in.

This could serve as underlying reference structure or metadata for any one of the visionaries listed above. This should be possible, especially as we move off the antiquated medium of distributing ideas on paper to more accommodating digital mediums.

The shimmer-red helicopter bearing Evo Morales towards the Temple of Kalasasaya last Thursday was a strangely modern twist to the morning’s ritualistic proceedings, but the theatrical entrance still earned great applause from the thousands of supporters who had gathered in the altiplano town of Tiwanaku, 70 kilometers outside of La Paz. The crowd was congregated to celebrate Evo’s imminent inauguration as Bolivia’s chief executive, a post he won for the second time this past December as part of a wider electoral victory by his party, Movimiento a Socialismo (MAS). That morning, however, the president was being vested with a brand-new title, one equally important for the people assembled: Apu Mallku, spiritual leader of the Andean indigenous peoples.

The setting was appropriate. Kalasasaya lies at the center of the remains of the most important city of the Tiahuanaco civilization, a pre-Incan empire that controlled large swaths of the Andes from the 7th to 12th century C.E. The ancient complex is one of only a few testaments that remain to speak of the peoples that flourished in the Bolivian highlands before the Spanish invasion; as a result, the social movements that seek to link themselves to the region’s pre-colonial history have adopted the ruins as a spiritual home. The site has particular resonance for the Aymara, Bolivia’s largest indigenous group and the one to which Morales himself belongs; as the traditional people of the altiplano, they consider themselves directly connected to the Tiahuanaco.

Driving west from La Paz early Thursday morning, I could see why the region had served as a spiritual center for over a thousand years. The remains of the timeworn city still stand proudly above the plateau, echoing the sharp-crowned mountains that surround the sun-battered, wind-fused plains. The land has a tundra beauty of bright flatness and green mountain air, of open horizons crowded by distant-clear peaks.

By the time I arrived at 8:30 am, thousands of elaborately dressed campesinos and campesinas were already drifting slowly from the highway towards the ruins, stopping along the way to buy fresh fruit, fresh coca and refreshing MAS paraphernalia. Decked out in my own brand-new bright-blue MAS headband and Evo scarf, I joined the crowd’s mile-long trek. Circling round a long police arc, we made our way into an open field facing the Temple.

The official ordination, scheduled for the following day (Friday, January 22) in La Paz at the Presidential Palace, was designed primarily for journalists, political elite and foreign dignitaries; there would be a long speech to the new Congress, a formal military parade and the ceremonial oath of office. But Thursday’s investiture was a celebration of and for Evo’s political base. And the base was keen to take advantage. From 9 to 11 am, the crowd grew from perhaps five to thirty thousand, as troupes representing various indigenous groups, unions and political parties arrived not only from all regions of Bolivia but from Argentina, Peru, Chile and other Latin American countries. Crews of cholitas (campesina women) wearing traditional skirts of bright red and dark umber sat in large circles sharing rice and corn. Musical troupes in luminescent green and orange danced to folk songs springing from Andean flutes and drums. Hundreds of banners large and small proudly displayed associations and affiliations, while a giant fifty-foot Evo balloon-doll graced the sky. The gathering was part political rally, part religious pilgrimage and part music festival; I couldn’t decide whether to shout slogans, meditate or crack a beer and join in the dancing.

The day was designed not only to celebrate Evo’s victory but to demonstrate the right of his indigenous supporters to mark that celebration with their own customs. It was an opportunity fully embraced. At 11 am, as the helicopter cruised to the ground behind the temple walls, Evo was met by the community’s amautas aymaras – somewhere between wisemen and priests – who ritually cleansed him with holy water and herbs before dressing him in a specially woven llama-wool robe – unku, in Aymara.

The wool itself represented communication, while the Andean symbols decorating it imbued prosperity, wisdom and success. On his head, los amautas placed a ch’uku, a hat with four corners representing the four cardinal points.

Properly attired, the politician turned priest-king ascended la pirámide de Akapana, a small nearby hill with the remains of a Tiahuanacoan altar, where he received the blessings from the South, North, East and West, respectively representing economic stability, the union of the country’s Orient and Occident, health for all Bolivians and wisdom for the leader himself.

Benedictions received, Morales and his entourage threaded their way back down to the Temple, escorted by an Aymara anciana (elderly woman) of more than 100 years of age and borne along by the galloping applause of the assembled crowd. Framed by a large archway in the Temple wall, the coronation began in earnest. Morales received two bastones de mando indígenas – which I will poorly translate as “scepters of indigenous authority” – from a pair of children in llama white. Representatives of important constituencies, including labor syndicates, women’s collectives and community coalitions, paraded by in formation and were duly recognized in turn. Finally, leaders of indigenous social movements from across the Americas – from Peru, Ecuador, the US, and Canada, among others – climbed the stairs one at a time to present the Chief with laurels, robes and other symbolic gifts.

Fully adorned, Evo turned to address the crowd, now forty thousand strong, in both Quechua and Aymara, before launching into a longer discourse in Spanish. He touched on themes familiar to those who have followed his presidency: on the power of social movements, the transition from a colonial to a plurinational state, and the need for ongoing political reform. He leveled his standard attacks on Capitalism, a term that stands in for all things American, Western, Imperialist, Colonialist and Generally Wrong.

Cheers, however, were reserved for his discussion of the historical purpose of the Bolivian people. In a world endangered by capitalism, a “new light of hope emerges from the people that never forget…a form of life lived in complementariness and solidarity…with Mother Earth … [in which] we know how to distribute wealth among all and live in harmony with all.” The Bolivians are descendents of people who have long waged a battle against capitalism, “always standing and never kneeling in the confrontation.”

Throughout the speech, repeated references to native predecessors, complemented by pledges to fight for future generations, reinforced a blunt political effort to fit the Morales administration – and the movements that brought it into power – into a historical social narrative; the morning as a whole sought to reach both back and forward in time, stretching across three millennia from the Andean nobility of the Tiahuanaco people to the recently purchased Chinese helicopter fleet. Evo was not only taking on the spiritual mantle of a centuries-old struggle for the rights and dignity of the indigenous peoples of America but proudly leading Bolivia forward in to the 21st century.

Yet while the morning’s narrative captured the imagination (at least of this partial observer), it also perfectly encapsulated the tensions latent in Evo’s reign. The ritual consciously invoked kingship while investing Morales with a heavy spiritual and political charge, thereby casting the president as a leader apart, the luminary of the world’s indigenous movements. And yet by defining the struggle in broad historical terms and situating his worldview firmly in the traditions of Bolivia’s peoples, Evo simultaneously presented himself as no more than an expression of movements that have long driven Bolivia forward.

These tensions manifest themselves in the relationship between Evo and his supporters, as that morning’s festivities well demonstrated. While supporters had made the trek from wide and far to bear witness to the ceremony, there seemed to be at least equal enthusiasm directed towards fellow political travelers. Attention would shift to the ceremony or the speech at moments of particular valence, but remained largely focused on the festivities themselves – the dancing, the hearty congratulations, the reunions of veterans of battles won and lost. I had the feeling that while Evo felt he had won the battle, la gente knew they had won the war: a victory of, by and for the people. The question is one of power and its balance. In America, when the elections end, the vast majority of people return to their apolitical lives. But Bolivia’s social movements, empowered by victories over the last decade, retain a keen sense of agency; Evo did not create them, and does not control them.

Or, at least, so believe the movement actors with whom I’ve spoken. What Evo believes – whether he sees himself as the indispensable spiritual guide or the humble movement cipher – is harder to determine. Though he rose to elected office through his work as a union-leader and organizer, it can be difficult to retain one’s grassroots orientation when in power, especially amidst such pomp and ceremony. As long as Evo’s political decisions remain aligned with the will of Bolivia’s social movements, the tensions between the two roles will remain dormant. But if paths diverge – if Evo finds himself a leader with no followers – the social movements may begin to view him as an obstacle in the way of reform, and then neither North nor South nor East nor West will be able to save him.

At the moment, this possibility seems remote – Evo won an election with 64% of the vote only a few short weeks ago. But in the months and years ahead, Evo must confront a series of critical policy questions that will pit the interests of his base against other national constituencies and needs. He has promised communities control over their natural resources, while also pledging to expand natural gas production; already, the state-run gas company YPFB has expressed concern about tensions with indigenous groups. His rhetoric around Pacha Mama and pledges to protect the environment come into clear conflict not only with these proposed exploitations of natural gas but with his ideas for lithium, timber and hydro-power use. He campaigned partially on regional and municipal autonomy, and yet has a government filled with Marxists keen on central state power. While advocating a move towards socialism, he has made few moves to challenge private property. With a five-year term ahead of him, it will be near impossible to avoid making political decisions that alienate his allies.

Morales is aware of these challenges. His speech touched on the importance of plurinational consensus and on the challenges of building a unified state. But the assemblage seemed relatively uninterested in these details of governance; by the time the formal remarks concluded, they were more than ready to return to the celebration. The crowd shouldered towards the open fields beyond the temple grounds, where hundreds of vendors stood ready with cold Paceñas and hot plates. They were joyful, united by a collective embrace of indigenous power embodied in the person of their president. That joy carried over in to a two-day long party that continued long after Evo had returned to La Paz to face the more mundane and complex tasks of governance. In that effort, he may very well succeed in balancing the interests of his traditional base and the exigencies of the country as a whole. But if he fails, he may discover that luminary though he is, and spiritual guide though he may be, he is at the same time only one actor in a struggle greater than himself.

Increasingly I find people are going into stores with no intention of actually buying anything. They are going to stores to touch, try and ask questions about a product in person then jot down the description of the ones plan to buy so later they can go online to purchase it for less $ and have it sent directly to them. A trend like this which provides so much benefit to consumers is likely to grow, even at the detriment of retail stores.

What if stores just stopped holding inventory or distributing physical products all together? By taking the ‘Experience Store’ concept to the next level, stores could still offer an opportunity for customers to come in, look at sunglasses, try them on, ask if they float – and if they like them, they could even complete the transaction in the store (or opt to have the product info emailed). In this model, no products ever enter or leave the actual store. Instead of making profits from selling inventory, they would make money by leasing space directly to manufacturers who want to drive awareness and get products into consumers hands. Orders placed in the store could be referred directly to fulfillment centers managed directly by manufacturers.

Why stores might love this..

• they would save a great deal of space that would otherwise be taken up by inventory/ stock rooms. Thus allowing them to offer more product variety
• they would no longer have to worry about the risks of managing (theft, loss, damage, returns) /forecasting inventory (overstocking or stocking out)

Why manufacturers might love this..

• By side stepping the need to sell their products wholesale (typically 1/2 the retail price) to store fronts, they will be able to reap much much higher profitability by selling directly to the customer
• getting closer to the customer end consumer means they will be able to ramp up, cut or tweak production faster

Why consumers might love this..

• More product variety in stores
• Since stores will need a much smaller margin to cover their overhead (as they no longer carry inventory costs) the end price to consumers would be significantly lowered
• less shopping bags!

Despite all the pro’s there are still potential drawbacks to this strategy…

• It completely disrupts the way traditional distribution systems have been built, meaning lots of upfront $$ will be required to perfect it
• there are those times when we all like to have products immediately, in which case this system would not cut it.

This blog post is part 2 of the Sandbox Network ‘Palomar 5′ series: a six week innovation camp in Berlin from 9 October – 24 November 2009. To follow the progress of the conference, you can view the official Palomar 5 blog. Alternatively, if you are on twitter, follow hashtag #p5 for real-time updates. You can also check out one of our camp member’s daily video blog on Youtube. (Part 1 is here)

By Max Marmer

Two Thirds of the Palomar5 Innovation Camp has already passed. Four weeks down, two to go until the 2 day Summit, when we will have the opportunity to present the fruits of our labour to an eminent group of thought leaders, politicians, scientists and investors.

Before we dive deep into the Palomar5 experience let me give you a quick overview of the last month:

Our first two weeks, focused on understanding the thought landscape we’re operating in, generating hundreds of ideas for projects mixed in with some intense bonding experiences. Two weeks of intensive prototyping ensued, and now we’re transitioning into storytelling mode for the summit.

The last 4 weeks have been amazing but I was hoping to get more done. But that’s probably just my restlessness to change the world talking. But it is strange how fast a month has flown by.

We had our second “reality check” yesterday, where we all presented what we’ve been working on to many highly respected professionals and received their feedback. Someone asked me how long ago the first reality check was, it felt like ages, a month at least, but in reality it was only two and half weeks.

As a rule of thumb, if you’re trying to describe a prolonged experience and it feels like time has passed incredibly quickly but when you reflect on things you did in the beginning and it feels like it happened a long time ago, it probably means you are doing something right.

The Final Stretch

I have spent a lot of time the last few years learning about frameworks that have supported me in developing visions for a better future, but it has taken time for my entrepreneurial skills to catch up to the size of what I’ve set out to accomplish. The last half a year I’ve become increasingly anxious about pontificating while building takes a back seat. With only two weeks left of the camp part of me wishes more had been accomplished while here. But I have to realize that while we’ve been here a month, real work only started two weeks ago and our last two weeks of focus have been incredibly productive. The end goal of the Palomar5 camp is not to create fully functional products for the summit. Of greater importance to Palomar5 is conveying the underlying vision behind our projects and validation of the experiment of bringing 30 diversely talented young people from around the world and forcing them to live and work together for 6 weeks. Fully functional projects that make an impact are definitely vital for the success of Palomar5, but we don’t want to be another idea factory producing theories and patents; we want our projects to make a mark on the world, but the purpose of the 6 week camp is just to create the gravitational core for these projects to continue to flourish once the camp is over.

The summit should play a huge role in jumpstarting this process, but it all depends on the quality of our storytelling and how well we convey the enveloping experience of Palomar5: the lifestyle, the passion, the big projects and all the little creative projects the flit in and out serving as creative fuel for our bigger initiatives. If we do this well, TED-esque as we all like to say, (it being our common inspiration and the height of sexy intellectualism), we’ll create a buzz around the camp that will accelerate the development of our projects.

The Malzfabrik and Beyond

While we’ve spent most of our days in our stylish cubes dreaming up the next big thing followed by nightly recharges in our sleeping boxes, the weeks have not been without some atypical extracurricular activity.

After an intense first three weeks the Palomar5 team announced a mysterious weekend trip with few details except that we were supposed to bring our passport and pack warm. We speculated about trips to Poland or Holland.

On Halloween morning we piled on our bus unsure of our intended destination. A few hours later we found ourselves at the beginning of 8 kilometer canoeing expedition down a river somewhere in northeast Germany. We exited our canoes 3 hours later to find ourselves on the outskirts of a sparsely populated town with a nearby castle awaiting our presence. In the evening our creativity was out in full bloom as we showed off our elaborate characters including killer Mario, the bloody nurse and cross-dressing men.

Our favorite part of the weekend getaway at the castle was the sauna buried in the basement with plenty of half naked sandboxers to go around. We now request saunas wherever we go.

Other highlights included a Sunday afternoon project constructing an 8 meter mask out of branches and twigs, which was burned in it the evening. And I enjoyed my longest period of silence in a while during a solitary forest walk.

Atmosphere

Earlier this week we attended the ceremony for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. On our walk back we noticed how this experience felt like the beginning of a new school. We’ve been living together for a month now and it feels like this is just the beginning of a new phase of our lives, which it is, but at the same time our concentrated camp experience is heading into the final stretch. The flight home will be very strange. The following weeks we’ll experience withdrawals as we return to reality, basically from the future. While we’ve been working on inventing the future of work, we’ve also been living it. This experience has seamlessly combined, friendship, fun, adventure and the birth of some really ambitious projects.

One thing I might change if I knew this could last beyond 6 weeks is not working as many hours during the day, I feel like life is cyclical, times where intense focus is required and other times where experimentalism is a better frame of mind. Making the most of my time here has been a higher priority for me. Trying to change the world takes sacrifice; again my restlessness talking.

How we maintain the community after the camp is an issue that looms large in all our heads, both for the continued success of our projects and the friendships we’ve built.

No matter what happens I think we can all say that the camp has inextricably altered our lives. And we’ll look back on our lives in a few years time categorizing our experiences with two denominations: BP and AP. Before Palomar5 and After Palomar5.

The pace of learning at this camp has been so high. I’ve often thought about what kind of person I’d become if every night I could go to bed completely mentally exhausted from the pushing my 3 pounds of grey matter continually past its limits. Palomar5 has given me four weeks of that dream. Everyday we discuss wide-ranging ideas, on many topics like learning, innovation, and culture.

One night Valentin and I were up late debating whether culture or technology was the stronger force driving society forward. While interesting, these conversations rarely lead to anything tangible, but Palomar5 begs to differ. The following day we were discussing how the iPhone achieved widespread cultural adoption so fast with technology so far ahead of what was previously available (normally a sticking point for products ahead of their time) and how our projects could succeed by similarly speeding up cultural adoption. The conversation immediately jumped to a new level as we drew on last night’s debate. Something in both our minds then clicked, “Wow that’s a first! Last night’s debate was enjoyable, but I never thought it would actually be productive.”

What We’ve Been Building At Palomar5

The theme of the camp of was the future of work, but that was just a starting point to sell the project. We’ve been given very little structure, and that’s the way like it. Lack of direction does not mean chaos, at least over the long term, our projects have naturally converged around big themes: Social consciousness, data and entrepreneurship.

These are incredibly important areas where a lot of growth will be made, and it’s even more notable that we were not told to pick 3 these topics, but our internal compasses driven by creative destruction, cycling through hundreds of projects over the last 4 weeks, led us here.

Our vision for redesigning society for digital age and generation is now more palpable with these themes guiding us. What’s notable is that while many of dreamed of redesigning society this kind of re-envisioning around our idyllic yearnings hasn’t always been possible. The industrial era required sacrificing creativity in the name of scalable efficiency, which was necessary to create the infrastructure to raise the quality of life to what is today. But while this era is long past its expiration date, it continues to live on like an infectious bacteria, contaminating our work and lives. So many of us realize it’s time to reinvent society and its organizations from the ground up, we now just need to commit to making it happen. Count Palomar5 in.

Magnifying Glass — Palomar5 Project Sneak Peak

Here’s a sneak peak into the vision of the project I’ve been most intensely involved in:

We’re postulating the future of work is going to have a lot more startups, because that’s where all the innovation is coming from.

The startup accelerator model is a big part of the future innovation landscape, think YCombinator, Techstars, Seedcamp, and now there are accelerators for more than web startups, using basically the same model like Palomar5 and the Unreasonable Institute. We think we’ll see a lot more of these.

The rise of accelerators means that there are now two big emerging markets: Pre and post accelerators.

We’re trying to build many of the tools needed to support startups post-accelerator: expert feedback systems, social network amplification in order to get connected to the right people, just in time learning to acquire skills to overcome new challenges, and repositories of best practices and eventually developing some kind of recommendation engine to streamline and automate the whole ecosystem.

Also, while startups are more innovative because they have freedom, flexibility and autonomy corporations still possess advantages of scale and greater resources.

Startups need to achieve advantages of scale as well, but they will be able to do this modularly and collaboratively. Currently large organizations are organized like big towers, even Google operates like this. But startups will be able to achieve scale and preserve their autonomy by acting like lego pieces. Currently, startups don’t have lego functionality, they’re just rectangular blocks that don’t interface well with each other but we’re providing the knobs and the holes to assemble large towers for particular projects that can easily dissemble at the conclusion of the project and build a new tower.

The prototype for our skill acquisition platform for entrepreneurs has recently been launched. Currently we’re only offering it to alumni of startup accelerators. http://forceforthefuture.com/founders-first/

Conclusion

There’s a lot of uncertainty in many of our lives now, but I love it. Many of us have nothing to go back to, no work to return to, just the opportunity to take the projects and relationships built over the 6 weeks as springboard for the next few years of our lives. It’s easy to get scared by the uncertainty, I still fall victim to it from time to time, but I know it’s really just a sign I’m taking good risks. While it’s comforting to know what life has in store, the predictability is antithetical to impact and growth.

A few nights ago Eddie (Harran) was hopping around in the cube with typical exuberance saying, “I wish could just work with you guys for the rest of my life” “What’s stopping you?” “Well, nothing!”

As a next step we will turn our thoughts, decisions and visions into concrete action points and products, to then go out, test them and collect YOUR feedback. At this early stage we would love to get in-depth feedback from you guys, have a real conversation and hear what YOU think. So, if you’re interested in shaping the future of Sandbox, please get in touch with me at fabian@sandbox-network.com or call me at +41 43 268 97 56 so we can talk.

And of course we’ll keep posting updates as we move forward. Stay tuned, an exciting journey lies ahead!

more photos from our strategy workshop here

A living legend for geeks from all continents, Vint Cerf is a 65-year-old computer scientist who co-invented the TCP/IP protocol and who is most frequently considered to be the father of the Internet as we know it today.

His three-piece suit and his beard make him look like Matrix’ Architect, though with a sense of humor. He is now a Google vice-president, and their Chief Internet Evangelist.

In this talk in Geneva during LIFT09, Vint Cerf mentioned the biggest challenges now faced by the information and communication technology, two of which have particularly raised our attention:

We must increase the number of IP addresses
An IP address is an identification assigned to a computer, allowing him to communicate with other devices over the Internet. As the research program started in the seventies, which led to the current form of Internet, no one could tell how many possible addresses should be created for the purpose of the experiment.  The plan was to do a low scale test, before launching a “production version” of the Internet. The immediate success had the consequence that there has never been a production version.

The IP addresses had been defined as a 32 bit number, which gives a total of 4’294’967’296 possible addresses. With 542 million computers connected to the Internet, and 3.5 billion devices, we are already reaching capacity limits, although we still have 80% of the world to connect. A new kind of Internet Protocol (IPv6) will use a 128 bits technology and will allow for 3.4×10ˆ38 possible addresses, which should cover our needs for the next couple of decades.

InterPlaNet: Interplanetary Internet
One of humanity’s biggest hopes – at least for some scientists – is to once be able to colonize other planets and therefore free us from being too dependable on the future of the Earth.

But we will have to “space-enable” Internet before that: what would be life on Mars if you wouldn’t be able to add your earthan friends on Facebook? Before sending humans to other planets, we will have to figure out how to send data. It doesn’t seem to be a big deal as we already send and receive data to and from satellites, but Internet is a much richer communication system, and the current protocols were not thought for interplanetary stuff.

The problem? “The distance between the planets is literally astronomical, and at the speed of light, it takes 3.5 minutes for a signal to propagate to Mars.” So if your computer makes a request, it will have to wait at least 7 minutes until receiving the answer, and the current internet protocols have been designed to handle delays of some milliseconds, not minutes. Another problem is celestial motion: “planets have the nasty habit of rotating and we haven’t figured out how to stop that yet”. There are people working on this and the InterPlaNet should be ready in November 09.