ISLAND ONE, a prime time family sitcom set on the High Frontier

Well, I have an idea for at least some of the governments that you
might find on various Islands:

American Indian Tribes.

I'm from Oklahoma, and thus far the tribes mainly just invest, but I
see this as the sort of thing where the tribe ITSELF might do the
construction. And really, wouldn't one of the tribes be the perfect
group to do this? They already have a clear voting system, they have
territory down on Earth that they can ship really troublesome
individuals down to, they already have a clear membership, and they
already have a clear government (I believe that they still have
judges, too). The only place where I, as an Oklahoman, am not clear on
their status is law, and that's because they were initilly considered
a seperate nation, but their lands are now partially subject to
Oklahoma law, and partially not subject to Oklahoma law, which leads
to a somewhat confusing situation if you don't actively investigate
the subject, which I thus far haven't.

And just in case anyone's curious, yes, the Chiefs of the five
'civilized' tribes are elected too. Have been since before the Trail
of Tears, as I best recall.

The only real question I have is how you'd get the Island considered
territory of the particular Tribe and of America. And American
soverentity is necassary because my proposed station-exile system
would basically depend on American citizenship.

As for the maybe ubiqitous personal worn computer, I expect that it
would just be called a PDA. A link would just be a name for the
generic data connection, which would probably be a high-speed wireless
LAN system. Incidentally, your PDA would probably BE your telephone,
because you can use VOIP technology in such situations.

And terrierkeeper, I don't suppose you'd be interested in writing a
'what if the Byzantine Empire never fell' story, would you? As best I
can tell, World Wars 1 & 2 and a bunch of others can be attributed (at
least partially) to the fall of the Byzantine Empire.