Tom Maddox followed Vinge. His vision was very similar, though the source of control, different. The governments power would not come just from chips. The real source of power, Maddox argued, was an alliance between government and commerce. Commerce, like government, fares better in a better regulated world.
Property is more secure, data are more easily captured, and disruption is less of a risk.
The future would be a pact between these two forces of social order. When these two authors spoke, the future they described was not yet present. Cyberspace was increasingly everywhere, but it was hard to imagine it tamed to serve the ends of government. And commerce was certainly interested, though credit card companies were still warning customers to stay far away from the Net. The Net was an exploding social space of something.