I'm having trouble accepting that 9/11 was really an inflection point in internet freedom. Throughout human history, whenever a new frontier opens, as soon as it's shown that one can make money at it, the established interests rush in and take over. I can't see how 9/11 accelerated or changed this.
The problem with the woolly decentralized frontier is that certain functions really are better when network effects come into play. In the 90's, our biggest problem with the internet was finding things. Google solved that better than just about everyone else. Facebook later solved the problem of finding people we'd lost touch with (remember the first wave of its use and the huge number of divorces as people connected with old flames?). Decentralization can't do network effects efficiently. Otherwise tech wouldn't be concentrated in Silicon Valley and a few other hubs. It'd be everywhere.
Which raises the question of how one pays for the network and who manages it. The problem of the "bit economy" was identified in the mid-nineties. How do you make money when replication if free? (Unlike the atom economy where replicating a bunch of atoms has a manufacturing cost). The easy solution is advertising and so "easy" beat out better and drove us to the structure we have now.
The "winners" were coming regardless of the involvement of intelligence agencies. I find it difficult to believe that the Government picked Facebook over MySpace and all the other proto-social networks. If the intelligence agencies actually are involved in Facebook (which I find very doubtful given how it's used frequently by people actively trying to overthrow the government, who would be quashed if the intelligence agencies were actually involved), then they're doing a crappy job.
Perhaps if you fleshed out the micropayments argument more, I could accept that. It's pretty clear that the collusion of the major credit card companies have effectively strangled them by ensuring that they get their "cut" of everything (as well as creating a non-governmental method of suppressing "undesirable" economic activity).
But advertising was clearly way ahead of micropayments as a way of funding the digital economy. So again, I'm struggling to see how the slowing of decentralization was anything but inevitable.
Also, the argument that America had lost its taste for liberty and was arguing over which form of authoritarianism to embrace is worth its own separate long discussion. I agree that it happened, but understanding the contributing causes may help us push back against it better.
I'm having trouble accepting that 9/11 was really an inflection point in internet freedom. Throughout human history, whenever a new frontier opens, as soon as it's shown that one can make money at it, the established interests rush in and take over. I can't see how 9/11 accelerated or changed this.
The problem with the woolly decentralized frontier is that certain functions really are better when network effects come into play. In the 90's, our biggest problem with the internet was finding things. Google solved that better than just about everyone else. Facebook later solved the problem of finding people we'd lost touch with (remember the first wave of its use and the huge number of divorces as people connected with old flames?). Decentralization can't do network effects efficiently. Otherwise tech wouldn't be concentrated in Silicon Valley and a few other hubs. It'd be everywhere.
Which raises the question of how one pays for the network and who manages it. The problem of the "bit economy" was identified in the mid-nineties. How do you make money when replication if free? (Unlike the atom economy where replicating a bunch of atoms has a manufacturing cost). The easy solution is advertising and so "easy" beat out better and drove us to the structure we have now.
The "winners" were coming regardless of the involvement of intelligence agencies. I find it difficult to believe that the Government picked Facebook over MySpace and all the other proto-social networks. If the intelligence agencies actually are involved in Facebook (which I find very doubtful given how it's used frequently by people actively trying to overthrow the government, who would be quashed if the intelligence agencies were actually involved), then they're doing a crappy job.
Perhaps if you fleshed out the micropayments argument more, I could accept that. It's pretty clear that the collusion of the major credit card companies have effectively strangled them by ensuring that they get their "cut" of everything (as well as creating a non-governmental method of suppressing "undesirable" economic activity).
But advertising was clearly way ahead of micropayments as a way of funding the digital economy. So again, I'm struggling to see how the slowing of decentralization was anything but inevitable.
Also, the argument that America had lost its taste for liberty and was arguing over which form of authoritarianism to embrace is worth its own separate long discussion. I agree that it happened, but understanding the contributing causes may help us push back against it better.