Information Technology Meets Global Ecology III: Are Computers Centralizing
or Decentralizing Power?
In last week’s tip, Joseph Hart writing in 1924, talked about the glories of
electricity: how this new energy source would decentralize power to the
people.
We are hearing the same talk now about how the internet will liberate each
computer user and decentralize information distribution. Electricity and the
internet are very similar systems. Electricity distribution even mimics the
actual structure of the internet in that it has hubs (servers) and lines that
go to individual houses (or computers) for power distribution, usage
measurement and billing. Imagine that electricity is digital information
being pumped over these lines.
Could we be under the same delusions at the early stages of this new
technology revolution that Hart was? -- that somehow the houses/PCs at the ends
of those lines will have the ultimate power? There were a few short halcyon
months for the world wide web, back when CERN’s Tim Berners-Lee developed an
open platform methodology for the presentation of scientific information; but
now Big Business and Big Government have their mitts in the pot, vying for
regulation and control of a system where even privacy is threatened. The
internet has been commandeered by the machinery of capitalism. And since when
has the consumer been in the driver’s seat of that machine?
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Stay tuned next week for a continuation of our discussion.
These ideas appear as the feature article in the Feb 15th issue of Mindjack: http://www.mindjack.com
