Is anyone reading Existence by David Brin ? While its primary focus is the Fermi Paradox, Brin has described an interesting vision of the future. So far I am still half-way through the book while traveling by rail inl UK, but I believe some parts are very useful as inspiration for Eclipse Phase. Brin does come up what effectively is mesh and comes up with interesting ideas how it could be used combined with reputation. What I did like for example is how celebrity can create an ad-hoc think-tank to help in dangerous situation(basically the more popular you are the more people will come to advise you in critical moments like say dealing with explosives), other interesting ideas involved selling your own sight to view something interesting or the role of journalists- I liked was how tracing your eye movement during the speech you can pin-point on who the speaker looks like the most and then see who that person is etc. Another interesting thing is that Brin just names spade a spade and in the future there is no longer a world of celebrities, CEO's, bankers. Sure there are functions like that, but after deep social problems people starting generally naming them aristocracy(Brin uses the term causally in the book). I liked that touch. As stated, the book isn't yet finished by me, and I will give more full review when I am done reading it, but so far I would recommend it.