Quoth Zeynep Tufekci:
2- Many of these are natural monopolies; due to network externalities, it makes sense that there will be one big online auction space (Ebay), one big search engine (Google), one big social directory (Facebook), one big encyclopedia (Wikipedia), etc.
What do you mean by network externalities here? For some things like search, I'd tend to agree that centralisation is a simpler fit, but most applications I can think of, a good example being facebook-style 'social networking,' could work much better in a decentralised distributed way. Of course facebook is here now, and good P2P tools using for example FOAF & SSL & RSS aren't so much, but I certainly don't think it's the case that centralisation is inevitable for most things. Indeed the model of the web that Zuckerberg envisages (with a few tweaks, such as removing facebook as intermediary), in which people use their extended online network more than eg google / ebay / craigslist to find information / products / services, makes decentralis[ed/able] networks more central (excuse the pun) still. By virtue of its copyright licensing, wikipedia also somewhat avoids the problems of monopoly. The 'freedom to fork,' while far from perfect, significantly mitigates a lot of the problems with other centralised services. It's relevant to note that yesterday I listened to the recording of Eben Moglen's recent talk on freedom & the cloud ( http://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2010/feb/08/audio-and-video-eben-moglens... ) and as always he's heavily influenced my thinking. As opposed to an earlier comment which suggested that many people were just apathetic about various sorts of personal data being aggregated and sold, I think the scope of what's possible and being done is largely just poorly understood. So the problem isn't so much apathy as ignorance. Nick White -- GPG : 0x04E4653F | 9732 D7C7 A441 D79E FDF0 94F6 1F48 5674 04E4 653F