I'm sure we all, at one time or another, wish we could say "Beam me up, Scottie." Well, we could *say* it but it won't work -- yet. If you could dig up one of those 49ers who went to the California gold rush a century and a half ago; and if you could revive him, he would look at all the modern things we have and to him, they would be a real transporter beam.

You could turn on a picture thingy in your house and show him a guy in Washington, D.C. carrying on a conversation with another guy in San Francisco, just as if they were in the same room, and he would think it was a transporter beam. (Well, maybe you should show him a few old Star Trek reruns on that picture thingy, just so he would know what a transporter beam does.)

You could tell him that you could step into an aluminum cylinder in Atlanta right after breakfast, and then step out in time for lunch in Los Angeles. He would be sure that it was a transporter beam.

If he saw the message on this screen and you said that in just a few moments, someone on the other side of the world might be reading it, he would know for certain that it was a transporter beam.

In light of this, I don't think it is out of the question that people will be beaming themselves around the world in another century or so. They might be beaming themselves "out there." They might just beam the word "impossible" right out of the language.

And that brings up another thought. How long will it be until there is only one language? How about only one race? Or one nationality?
Howard