[dspillett]

But it isn't an empty frontier that the thinkers/developers are entering alone. The existing problems both commercial and legal (and not-quite-so-legal-but-state-funded-so-good-luck-fighting-that-one) will be so close behind to stop/exploit/both as to make the exploration very inconvenient. I'm not saying it can't happen, but it won't happen organically over a period of time like email did.