The announcement last week of a new version of the popular Desktop utility from Google has provoked criticism from privacy groups and stern warnings to users from the digital rights advocate, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

The EFF urged consumers not to use a feature called “Search Across Computers,” warning that it makes their personal data vulnerable to government subpoena, private litigants, and hackers. “Coming on the heels of serious consumer concern about government snooping into Google’s search logs, it’s shocking that Google expects its users to now trust it with the contents of their personal computers,” EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston said in a statement published on the EFF web site.

The nation’s largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online.

The Long Tail is all about abundance: the economic effects of infinite shelf space. Unfortunately, neoclassical economics has virtually nothing to say about abundance. Indeed, the economics of abundance is almost exclusively the domain of extropians, a few other transhumanists, and science fiction writers. How can this be?