[1dom]

There were quite a few, I think. It depends who you ask as to which was the leading one.

There was also Microcosm, HyperG and others. The Web was notable amongst them in avoiding money and licensing sort of stuff altogether (e.g. Xanadu made a point about micropayments for lots of content, and I think many of the others fell to the temptation of catering to cash in some way or other).

[salawat]

Anything with micro transactions is dead on arrival without massive disintermediation, or a revolution in the way we handle the incestuous relationship between finance, crime, and law enforcement.

You can have a world where all people are capable of trivially transacting, without having anyone else say no, and consequently, financial crime is trivial, and a nigh-intractable problem to handle. Or you have the ability to enforce sanctions, anti-money laundering, and taxation laws, financial crime is at least tractable with sufficient will, and you have the perfect abusable engine of tyranny through which people can be completed ousted from society through financial lockout or micromanagement. Almost inevitably, you will not be the one with your hand on that button.

Choose wisely.

[seec]

Interresting point of view.

But don't you think that today's internet already provides lockout and micromanagement without ever needing the microtransaction part?

This is actually all the talks around censorship on various platforms and random ejection from various marketplace/social system without much recourse for some (can go from being censored on any given social network, to being prevented to publish on app stores, to having your google account fully taken away).

Sure, you might still be able to access the internet, but is that relevant? What people come to do on the internet is more in relation with other people than anything else. Tech doesn't matter that much; everything ends up being built around social networks/issues.

And in the end, the internet is just a layer built on top of a physical system that is very much dependent on a given social structure/hierarchy. If that social structure wants you out, it won't make much of a difference how your internet software works.

I kind of get what you are saying, but I fail to see how a microtransaction internet would be any more tyrannical than the "real world".

[1dom]

Interesting post!

> Sure, you might still be able to access the internet, but is that relevant?

I think that's the core point being made: if transaction are built into the infrastructure, then all the financial controls inevitably get built into the infrastructure such that you can't access the network any more.

I feel like your response rests on the assumption that Facebook/Google/<Provider that can choose to lock you out> _are_ the internet. But the defining point of the Web that succeeded for many was the long tail part of it, people and provider who aren't motivated to reject people for monetary related reasons.

As long as we're on the Web without transactions, there'll always be somewhere/someone you can go and interact with.

If transactions and subsequent monetary policy were implemented in the low level protocol, then you could be locked out in a way which meant you can't reach/find the people who would still want to interact with you.

One allows subcultures and counter-cultures to grow if they want, the other doesn't.