> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
> Behalf Of The Fool
...
> Seems like that has already happened somewhat (the rich get richer):
>
> http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/04/18/0348209&mode=thread
> http://modelingtheweb.com/
>
> Imagine: AOL-TW-Disney-Microsoft-Tribune
Oh, yes. That item certainly caught my eye, too. But as long as it ends up
with more like the rule-of-thumb 80:20 ratio, in terms of where people spend
their time, I'm not so concerned. Big media was in a position where the
vast majority of people (in this country, at least) were getting 100 percent
of their news and information from a very small handful of companies that
were indistinguishable from one another. Further, even within AOL, I assume
that people are exposed to more diverse points of view than in the mass
media. And, perhaps most important, they're *writing*, not just reading.
There has been a largely undocumented and ignored explosion in how much
writing ordinary people do today v. just a few years ago. I should write a
book... but I'm busy writing other stuff!
I think the thing to watch out for on the Internet is any attempt to hijack
the infrastructure, either through an oligopoly of network peering, or, as
we have seen with Microsoft and Java, attempts to subvert an open standard
into a proprietary one.
Nick
