Eric Kidd: The Missing Future. But there’s one group we haven’t heard from yet: The small software developers. For 25 years, these people were the lifeblood of the personal computer revolution. Their old vision is still the sexiest: Build great, innovative software, sell it to the users at a reasonable price, make millions of dollars, benefit humanity, retire young. And if you mistreat your users, you’ll loose them, because you have a hundred competitors. The old Silicon Valley was built on this dream, and it worked for two decades.
Expand this lament to other fields where the forces of centralization are beating back innovation. All have to do with the ascendance of “intellectual property” and the decline of the public good.
We are giving too much power to a tiny number of corporations. We will regret it.