Huh?
Web freedom faces greatest threat ever, warns Google's Sergey Brin
Exclusive: Threats range from governments trying to control citizens to the rise of Facebook and Apple-style ‘walled gardens'
The principles of openness and universal access that underpinned the creation of the internet three decades ago are under greater threat than ever, according to Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
In an interview with the Guardian, Brin warned there were “very powerful forces that have lined up against the open internet on all sides and around the world”. “I am more worried than I have been in the past,” he said. “It's scary.”
The threat to the freedom of the internet comes, he claims, from a combination of governments increasingly trying to control access and communication by their citizens, the entertainment industry's attempts to crack down on piracy, and the rise of “restrictive” walled gardens such as Facebook and Apple, which tightly control what software can be released on their platforms.
Phi Beta Iota: The most interesting point Sergei makes is with respect to pirate software servers working seamlessly with everything, while “industry” tries to “control” and ends up creating obstacles to access. System D is doing the same thing to the global economy of things and services. Neither Google nor Facebook appear to have the ethics or the vision to lead us all into the future. Twitter is developing in very interesting ways, if it can connect a few dots and cross-fertilize with Word Press, YouTube, Wolfram Alpha and Amazon, we may have a seismic shift in the next couple of years, with the World Brain and Global Game emergent. The other essential element is open source everything — death to Microsoft and Oracle, and in passing, create the open source everything analytic desktop envisioned by Diane Webb and others in 1985–it still does not exist because the US Government is simply NOT SERIOUS about doing intelligence with integrity. Nothing Google (or anyone else) does helps anyone actually “make sense” of information. Nobody, anywhere (other than Phi Beta Iota) is actually striving to achieve the ultimate hack: all humans, all minds, all information, all languages, all the time, all open. That is where Google and everyone else fails. You have to give up control to gain control. A subtle philosophical concept, one not yet comprehended in Silicon land.
See Also:
1989 Webb (US) CATALYST: Computer-Aided Tools for the Analysis of Science & Technology
THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO: Transparency, Truth & Trust
World Brain & Global Game 101-104
