[vijayboyapati]

It's always painful to watch luddite bureaucrats pontificate on technology and how it needs to be controlled to "protect" the population. I remember when I was at Google in 2003 there was a California politician who demanded that Google be regulated like a utility company because it was so important. That was when it was still a private company! Or when another California bureaucrat wanted to ban gmail because it violated people's privacy by showing targeted ads next to emails. Listening to people like this requires a perma-facepalm.

[md224]

I sympathize with your position, but I want to point out that it's equally foolish to assume that technological progress poses no dangers to society and that no control is necessary. It isn't really about controlling the technology either; it's about controlling how that technology is operated by human beings, people who are fallible and who can be dangerous when given a certain level of power.

There's definitely a continuum from "radical luddite" to "techno-utopian," and I think striking a balance between caution and optimism is the way to go.

[dllthomas]

"That was when it was still a private company!"

I don't see why there's any particular link between how widely distributed the ownership of a company is, and whether the infrastructure it is building holds potential for abuse and should be considered a matter of vital public interest. For the record, I think (with low confidence) that this is not true of Google and wasn't at the time, I just think this point is irrelevant.