[meddlepal]

I think it's an often forgotten (perhaps purposefully to push an agenda in some circles?) part of these discussions about corporations and business models. They're just driven by demand. It's not some shady nebulous force at work trying to screw everything and everyone.

Another problem, idealists often ignore the practical realities of a society when dreaming of their idealist visions for the future. Could the internet have turned into a purely free and perfect forum for communication? In an ideal world yes, but not in our flawed world where there are a host of competing contrasting ideas.

To the authors point. Technology is moving too fast for laws, governments and political systems to cope with. The political and legal constructs we use today are not radically different from 200 or 300 years ago. I don't know if there has ever been a time in human history where the rate of technological innovation and change has been moving at such a speed that the legal and political systems cannot stay synced with the change and have no chance of catching up due to the increasing velocity.

[TeMPOraL]

> corporations and business models. They're just driven by demand. It's not some shady nebulous force at work trying to screw everything and everyone.

Oh it's not shady in the sense that it has agency and decides to screw everything up. But it's very powerful and increasingly misaligned with the interest of humans. Being driven by demand does not map well to the shared wishes and morals of humanity, only if because of coordination problems.

I agree with your other points. And I didn't mean to point out that if Internet stayed non-profit, we'd have a perfect communication platform by now. For instance I think that if it became powerful, it'd still have problems with power and influence being a similar incentive to money. I only wanted to highlight the source of the problems we now have, which are those demand-satisfying, profit-driven actions. And that to make the Internet a better place, we would need to refuse doing things that seem optimal from business point of view but are detrimental to the Internet itself.

A pessimist in me says: this isn't likely to happen, because coordination is hard. So tragedy of commons here, no way to make a bottom-up group opposition there; we're screwed by coordination problems.

[qznc]

See also Meditations on Moloch for a more poetic desription: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

[jacobush]

That is such an awesome text.

[mdpopescu]

I generally upvote your comments but I think this one is far too pessimistic. You're worrying about coordination problems on the internet? That's like, I don't know, worrying about dying of thirst in the middle of the ocean.

Oh wait... :P

On a more serious note, though, I think this is just another problem to be solved. Long-term, I am an absolute optimist: everything will get better, everywhere. Short-term, I admit there are some speed bumps :)

[TeMPOraL]

> On a more serious note, though, I think this is just another problem to be solved. Long-term, I am an absolute optimist: everything will get better, everywhere. Short-term, I admit there are some speed bumps :)

Yeah, that's why I keep my pessimist locked up in a cage underground, and only let it out to get some air every now and then. :). I still want to believe we'll get the United Federation of Planets :).

[anon4]

To be annoyingly pedantic, ocean water is unfit to drink, i.e. contains too much salt, so you can very easily die of thirst in the middle of the ocean.

Just s/ocean/any big lake/

[mdpopescu]

That's why I said "oh wait" :)

[CognitiveLens]

The important qualifier for "just driven by demand" and "People paying to have their needs satisfied" is that some demands/needs/desires are more profitable than others regardless of their long-term importance to a particular system. Just because people are willing to pay for something (e.g. a new gadget) doesn't make it more valuable than something they are not willing to pay for (e.g. clean drinking water for thousands of children). Just because the short-term-focused free market is producing economic activity that satisfies a demand doesn't mean that the system is either healthy or long-term sustainable, and that's the crux of the issue about the idealized Internet - its viability as a platform for human advancement (broadly defined) has been undermined by its corresponding suitability to support independent profit-making.

[nekopa]

> They're just driven by demand. It's not some shady nebulous force at work trying to screw everything and everyone.

A great quote I read somewhere:

In marketing, there are those who satisfy needs and those who create wants