February 12, 2006
Keeping the djinni out of the bottle
In many ways I see the problems with Google's centralization as just another facet of a tension that has existed since the Internet started: the tension between the decentralized "every end-user is his own service provider" model and the centralized fiefdom model where you sign up for one of a handful of service providers. I think it was the coming of the Web in the early '90s that finally tipped the scale in favor of the decentralized model, and as a result we saw an explosion of URLs and email addresses that weren't only from AOL, CompuServe or Prodigy. This, I think, was all for the better. But now the proliferation of GMail addresses and Google Base scare me precisely because they smack a little too much of the fiefdom model we so wisely avoided 15 years ago.
Posted by bug to Media Technology at February 12, 2006 11:27 PM | TrackBackI'm inclined to see it as part of the ongoing game of leapfrog between centralized and decentralized information models; centralization has significant efficiencies (up to a point), but since we're all individual humans anyway, decentralization also has highly valuable affordances. So long as the game continues, its all good... it's only if either one at any point *actually* gets a lasting upper hand that we have a problem.
Posted by: RichardT at February 15, 2006 11:41 AM