[iDC] Autonomous spaces online?

[John Hopkins]

Good morning...

>"To be autonomous is to be a law to oneself; autonomous agents are
>self-governing agents."

...snip...

>A few days ago YouTube was bought by MTV.
>MySpace is now in Rupert Murdoch's hands.
>ICQ was obtained by AOL.
>Google acquired Writely as part of their online vision.
>Blogger is of course in Google's pocket for a long time.
>Del.icio.us and Flickr are now owned by Yahoo.
>
>Perhaps our alternative economies and social web media need to be
>hybrid? Perhaps autonomous zones are really an illusion (in the long
>run).

Well, isn't this 'problem' simply a result of too many people using 
the products of these large corporations -- we do, after all, have a 
choice.

It's exactly like the 'problem' of the US losing middle-class 
manufacturing employment.  The same people who are losing the jobs 
are the ones, until their unemployment benefits run out, shopping for 
cheap goods at Kmart, Walmart, and Costco.  Companies who base their 
production in China and elsewhere.

Ask a typical American what the provenance is for 90% of the consumer 
goods in their homes.  It's not the USA, but the connection to a 
crumbling local economy and infrastructure is obscured by the 
spectacle of consuming.

Somehow the call to "buy local" becomes a bit revolutionary -- and 
applies the same for the net (without the implied geographic 
limitation) -- what about using small ISP's, setting up private 
servers for mail, lists, irc?  Of course, one then has to deal with 
renting local network lines and such, but...

If one takes the model of K-12 education in the US on the "buy local" 
issue, though, where the primary source of school budgets come from 
local land taxes, you end up with a huge divide -- poor 
neighborhoods, poor schools and the converse -- the same would happen 
to the net...

And, of course, the Google problem remains, the lack of non.com 
search engines.  But aren't we guilty of a consumate and unlimited 
desire to CONSUME data via the net?  What about that omnivorous 
desire?  As though it is a right (for those with access).  There 
should be no limits 24/7.  I've seen in Europe during the last 25 
years, the inexorable march towards the 24/7 shopping experience 
(that Amurikans have 'enjoyed' for a couple decades now). 
Full-filling the desire to consume.  More, when where & how we want 
it NOW!

And, it has always disturbed me, one aspectg of the general 
discussion on digital rights and such -- how many people on the 
liberal side of that argument are overall producers of digital 
'information'?  How many are net consumers of digital information? 
Somehow it seems contradictory for net consumers to be arguing for 
free consumption -- except from the position of consuming...

hmmmm...

cheers
John