[georgia_peach]

They're still high priests of the machine, but now dressed in free t-shirts & warby parkers. I also dislike programmers, but they are the least of his problems.

Going by his own writings, his zealous consistency on trademark/copyright/credit, the limits of the technology (until blockchain) at the time... any micro-payments system coming out of that was destined to be more Lexis-Nexis than anything resembling decentralization, regardless of whatever Ted's intentions are.

And most of that "locked up" culture is garbage in the first place--the 100th starwars novel, the 25th tom clancy book, the latest nutrition or psychology paper that has been p-hacked to hell and back for the benefit of some commercial interest. Money doesn't attract creativity. Money attracts whores. So in addition to "SEO Experts" optimizing PageRank, we'd have Xanadu Experts gaming that system as well, and it would be just as full of garbage as Google is. Money would surely change hands, but to the pewds & mr beasts of XanaduSpace.