Billionaires Are A Security Threat

The success stories are wonderful, but they pale in comparison to the most important thing ever created on the web, the encyclopedia. It lives in your pocket all the time, and you can pull it out at a bar and talk about an article with your friend or date, even though it was ridiculed in the beginning. We don't pay much attention to it. It can't be quantified. It is free as well.

In medicine, finance, and art, we should be trying to create a spiritual equivalent of Wikipedia that does whatever is required. The memories of dead loved ones include math and cooking. Maybe computers too. Git may count, but it doesn't. The sharing economy, now an entire layer of professional existence across every conceivable dimensions, emerged from a bunch of startup emulating rideshare companies. It's time enough. Don't stop growing up. Nobody pays much attention. If you want to make a encyclopedia, go for it.

Open source software has always been propelled by the vague idea that it will improve the commons, that the implicit or higher-order collaboration resulting from showing and sharing your work leads to better projects, successful companies and more ambitious ideas. Some of us will find something up there if we stand on the shoulders of giants. That is a utopian vision we could all use a bit more of. The right thing for the public company business at the time was not the right thing for the internet and society. There is a tension that needs to be resolved. In a world filled with bored billionaires, lack of open access becomes a serious threat that could wipe it all out.

Technology has measured achievement in things like funding rounds, company valuations, and active users. These are all parts of capitalism. The platform for the platform is just money if you want to further investigate it. Who doesn't care? We know how this will go.

Code can be killed by capital. Anything can be killed by capital. If you have created something that is important, then you need to turn it into something that isn't for sale. An idea that can't be killed is more valuable than an idea that can't be killed, and the only thing that can't be killed is something that can't have a price tag to start with.

The foundation has been laid for the better, stronger, more resilient world that we need. ActivityPub, Bluesky, Mastodon, and good old RSS feeds are all waiting to pick up the slack if the world's most popular social networking site fails. People who are brilliant will create amazing things in Javascript, save them to GitLab remotes, and publish them on npm. Some of them have begun. The reasons why the worst case scenario would not be a complete disaster for the world's communication are listed here. All the pieces are out there. The mistakes we made in treating the platform as a platform were not made the last time around, so we will be okay. We will be alright because we still have the internet.