Great interview. I am going to buy his latest book. This hit me:"What’s most pernicious about it is that we are developing companies that are designed to do little more than take money out of the system – they are all extractive." I have been trying to avoid feeding the beasts, but it is difficult.
I am trying to condition myself to jump on GNU Social,instead of Twitter and G+. It is working somewhat; today about 3/4 of the hour I spent on social media was on GNU Social and even though it lacks some convenience I am able to find good things to read and meeting interesting people.
Substituting a small company like duck duck go for Google is fairly easy. Try to support local stores in preference to Amazon is difficult, even knowing that shopping on Amazon reduces my local shopping options in the future.
Somehow we need to support local economies, support people creating products with either no middlemen or at least fair marketplaces that perhaps only taking away 5% fees from producers. The game is rigged for large corporations, but we can still "win" if even a small minority of people participate in local economies and non corporate web properties.
Catherine Austin Fitts has a saying that I like: "There are people who make pies, and people who steal other people's pies." (Ref: solari.com)
BTW, I went to buy his latest book and I could save about $10 buying it on Amazon, save about $6 buying it from a physical bookstore that would mail it to me, or save $0 using the http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781617230172 site listed on the author's web site.
In the end, I went to my local library's web site and put a hold on two of his other recent books.
This seems more in spirit of avoiding large companies.
I went with loadaverage.org, but that was a random choice. Nice guy who runs it and since he pays for the server himself I sent him a donation and marked my calendar to do the same 6 months from now.
Do you have any non tech friends who own small businesses? Mine live in some for of bad SEO, the need to buy ads, etc.
I worked at Google for a while and am a fan of their tech, but I also have a realistic view of how a few large web properties extract more wealth than value.
Sorry my previous comment has been cut-off, phone issues.
Yes Google extracts a lot of value, but it does offer a lot too(and let's not forget the moonshots). And btw, the reason your friends pay a lot is partly because there's a lot of competition on their keywords. Is that Google's blame ? And that's the reason why uber drivers make less - competition.
BTW isn't it often the trade-off ? choose small, local businesses - and get far less innovation and value - or large business and get more innovation(because they have the capital, plus other structural benefits) and value, but lose lots of control and get more value captured ?
I think the best we can have is competition between the large and the small. So you have Amazon and Ebay's merchants ,each restraining each other. Maybe we need more stuff like that ,competition between the centralized and the distributed.
I am trying to condition myself to jump on GNU Social,instead of Twitter and G+. It is working somewhat; today about 3/4 of the hour I spent on social media was on GNU Social and even though it lacks some convenience I am able to find good things to read and meeting interesting people.
Substituting a small company like duck duck go for Google is fairly easy. Try to support local stores in preference to Amazon is difficult, even knowing that shopping on Amazon reduces my local shopping options in the future.
Somehow we need to support local economies, support people creating products with either no middlemen or at least fair marketplaces that perhaps only taking away 5% fees from producers. The game is rigged for large corporations, but we can still "win" if even a small minority of people participate in local economies and non corporate web properties.
Catherine Austin Fitts has a saying that I like: "There are people who make pies, and people who steal other people's pies." (Ref: solari.com)