From Sustain
Oh, but what are Google up to?
We stand at the very start of the information age, but our destiny hereon in already lies in too few corporate hands. Whilst the freedom of the internet is one of its central virtues, it also stands as an inherent flaw: power is left to amass unchallenged, with potentially long term amoral norms established.
There is a lot to admire in Google's progressive conquest of the age of information. The majority of the population benefits from Google’s innovation and ostensibly pays nothing. Google continues its apparent benign capture of ownership rights to the pioneering tools and raw materials of the information age.
Google is winning the race not only as a result of its superior strategy; it is winning because it is another natural monopoly, in the same manner as Microsoft before it. It should not be allowed to settle into its throne of dominance as an unregulated, advertising monster in control of our information.
Instead of the ultimate information tool being made unconditionally available for the good of all, we edge forward piecemeal only where future corporate revenue streams can be secured. If the people do not awaken soon to the current commercial trajectory of the internet, with its magnification of the destructive trends of consumer capitalism, our technological efficiency will only hasten the collapse of our biosphere.
We need to act before the company (that apparently isn't evil) and its brethren become an insurmountable barrier to the delivery of the sustainable society.
In the next chapter, I start to extemporise upon alternatives to our mode of governance that the digital age has made available, here.
