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>Books are centralised... how? When a book is published, it is one source producing static information for many readers. One to many. Producer -> Consumer(s).

>Books are centralised... how? When a book is published, it is one source producing static information for many readers. One to many. Producer -> Consumer(s). To create a book before the internet you had to be in the central location of the working copy. For more detailed historical analysis of how the printing press created highly centralized societies, check out The Gutenberg Galaxy by Marshall McLuhan[1]. On the contrary, with the internet, many people are producing and consuming dynamic content simultaneously with many people who are doing the same. Many to many. Prosumer <-> Prosumer[2]. Think of a Google Doc where anyone located anywhere across the globe can simultaneously collaborate on a Google Doc. [1]https://www.amazon.com/Gutenberg-Galaxy-Marshall-McLuhan/dp/144261269X https://www.amazon.com/Gutenberg-Galaxy-Marshall-McLuhan/dp/... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosumer#Producer_and_consumer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosumer#Producer_and_consumer

vacri 10y ago
That's quite spin-doctory. You may as well say that food is centralised because you have to be in the central location of whatever food it is you're consuming, regardless of the fact that literally billions of different people prepare food every day, in every inhabited place on earth.
- deleted 10y ago
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- wu-ikkyu 10y ago
  That's true. Agricultural production is mostly centralized (i.e. Monsanto's monopoly). Just because a lot of people consume food doesn't change that. One of the earliest centralized societies (cities) was Sumer, where we also see one of the first well established written languages (the written word being a centralizing medium) and also one of the first well established centers of agricultural production.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > Agricultural production is mostly centralized (i.e. Monsanto's monopoly). Monsanto's dominance is in seed supply to agricultural producers, not agricultural production itself.
    - wu-ikkyu 10y ago
      Are seeds not a fundamental requirement to agricultural production?
      - dragonwriter 10y ago
        Sure, but the Windows monopoly was a desktop OS monopoly, not a monopoly in every industry in which desktop computing capacity was a key input. Now, in the absence of effective regulatory intervention, there's a risk of a monopoly in one market being leveraged to other markets, and moving up or down the production chain is one of the most common ways that happens, but, there's still (even in the absence of effective regulatory intervention) a difference between a monopoly in market X and one in market Y that threatens to be extended to X.

vacri 10y ago

That's quite spin-doctory. You may as well say that food is centralised because you have to be in the central location of whatever food it is you're consuming, regardless of the fact that literally billions of different people prepare food every day, in every inhabited place on earth.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
wu-ikkyu 10y ago
That's true. Agricultural production is mostly centralized (i.e. Monsanto's monopoly). Just because a lot of people consume food doesn't change that. One of the earliest centralized societies (cities) was Sumer, where we also see one of the first well established written languages (the written word being a centralizing medium) and also one of the first well established centers of agricultural production.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Agricultural production is mostly centralized (i.e. Monsanto's monopoly). Monsanto's dominance is in seed supply to agricultural producers, not agricultural production itself.
  - wu-ikkyu 10y ago
    Are seeds not a fundamental requirement to agricultural production?
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      Sure, but the Windows monopoly was a desktop OS monopoly, not a monopoly in every industry in which desktop computing capacity was a key input. Now, in the absence of effective regulatory intervention, there's a risk of a monopoly in one market being leveraged to other markets, and moving up or down the production chain is one of the most common ways that happens, but, there's still (even in the absence of effective regulatory intervention) a difference between a monopoly in market X and one in market Y that threatens to be extended to X.