Red Herring: In the new order, everyone connects�with or without the old-fashioned phone company

"Nicholas Negroponte, a co-founder and longtime chairman of MIT's Media Laboratory, traveled to Dresden with Argentine telecommunications entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky to talk with a young German hacker named Brainslayer.

"Brainslayer, a.k.a. Sebastian Gottschall, 27, had developed Linux-based firmware to allow people to share Wi-Fi connections safely for Skype- and Google-backed FON, Mr. Varsavsky's Madrid-based venture to create a "bottom-up" global mesh of Wi-Fi hot spots.

"The journey to what used to be East Germany offered yet another glimpse at the telephone industry of the future—shaped by enterprises like Skype and Google, which grew by innovating on the edges of the telecom network and are now revolutionizing the network itself..."

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