Audio's been the canary-in-the-coal-mine of digital interactivity, with digital video riding its coattails, and it's no wonder because, done right, video requires lots more digits than audio.

The winding course of the broadband river to the home is straightening bionomically, as Michael Rothschild might put it (http://www.bionomics.orgwww.bionomics.org). What the entertainment ecosystem demands, the network flaura and fauna will supply. We are the beneficiaries of a rising tide of digitization, a bionomic flood, and the global competition for our attention (and wallets).

The transition from acoustic to electric was far more savage than that from electric to digital. Rights holders eventually figure out the customer is always right (whether or not we agree with the customer, no copyright law can force open a wallet), and here too money will find a more efficient path between artist and fan regardless of the rightholder reluctance.

Ultimately, interactivity will be direct to centralized servers. In the meantime, buffers and caches will cover for network inefficiency, whether controlled by the network or the end-user, as with smart buffers like Tivo (now sporting USB ports) or Replay (now shipping with Ethernet built-in).