Michael Barnsley has some intersting ideas about this Blue_Velvet.
He's the one who lead the research of fractal compression in the 80s (what american military sattelites use for transferring large data files (mostly hi def sattelite images)) and the founder of Iterated Systems Inc. He's been working on the practical side of fractals for years and thinks in the future fractals will revolutionize technology in a way unimaginable to us today. I've heard him talk about this a few times but it's been a while so I can't give any more info on it. Googling his name might bring something up.