it's difficult to tell, but i think the european union will become more and more important, overruling the countrie's own governments. the current borders in the eu are ok, there's not much controlling done so that theoretically we can go everywere in europe (except for maybe some eastern states).

the distributed computer system will indeed outgrow local processing of tasks. look at current projects in the internet (ajax powered applications) like image manipulation, writely and google spreadsheets. you can also record tv shows and download them afterwards, and all that one year after the ajax functionality has become so popular. one year! what about that in, let's say, ten years? local disks and computer hardware will only be for translating the data that comes via net into visual information (the linux x-server is a good example for that).

joey.