| > We keep expecting the internet to change this, and it keeps not happening. Because the Internet has enabled clusters like Silicon Valley or Hollywood to be even more prominent. Before the Internet, if you wanted to do something in tech, you probably would have only looked for local opportunities, but now because of the Internet, you have the impression that SV is almost the only place where you can do something notable in tech. Big names have gotten bigger and global, a lot of them becoming de facto monopolies. The Internet makes access to information easier, but at the same time it narrows information sources enormously because it puts all of them on the same playing field, leaving only very few winners. For example, pre-internet you might have read your local paper to be up to date with the news, now instead you probably read the news at the website of a global news company. It's almost impossible for the local paper to compete with the global company. Basically the Internet has created a global winner-takes-all market where everyone is competing for attention, and mostly only the big players win, or at least that's what the Internet makes us believe. |