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> it makes individuals less autonomous Really, I think the problem is not so much the decreasing autonomy of the individual, but rather the increasing concentr

> it makes individuals less autonomous Really, I think the problem is not so much the decreasing autonomy of the individual, but rather the increasing concentration of power. In a modern society, you are already massively dependent on other people, in a normal day you get into contact with the direct result of the work of thousands of people (as in: not just people who had the idea to bake a bread, but actually people who contributed to the specific bread that you are eating now), and I think that's perfectly fine. What is problematic is if a small group of individuals/companies get a massive amount of centralized control over a large part of the population.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
Maybe. It seems like a parallel concern. For example, if I get hold of a textbook about baking bread, and go to my farm to produce crops for the bread and then bake it myself, using only the things my soil provides for me, I'm still using the accumulated knowledge and experience of thousands of people. If I decide to buy the same bread from someone else, I'm adding more accumulated human touch into the mix. In this way, there's a difference between services of contemporary people and the sum of accumulated human experience I can access. The second one is additive, and I believe society progresses as fast as it can add to it. Here, DRM directly slows humanity down. That said, I agree - we're not too autonomous anyway, and modern lifestyle is directly dependent on being plugged into the socioeconomic machine. Still, economy was meant for man, not man for the economy; I'm worrying about how much economic interests restrict us for no other reason than lining someone's pocket. Technology enables individuals to do cool ways, to build the world around themselves as they see fit, but then comes the business models that start restricting these abilities in order to squeeze more money out of people.

TeMPOraL 9y ago

Maybe. It seems like a parallel concern. For example, if I get hold of a textbook about baking bread, and go to my farm to produce crops for the bread and then bake it myself, using only the things my soil provides for me, I'm still using the accumulated knowledge and experience of thousands of people. If I decide to buy the same bread from someone else, I'm adding more accumulated human touch into the mix. In this way, there's a difference between services of contemporary people and the sum of accumulated human experience I can access. The second one is additive, and I believe society progresses as fast as it can add to it. Here, DRM directly slows humanity down. That said, I agree - we're not too autonomous anyway, and modern lifestyle is directly dependent on being plugged into the socioeconomic machine. Still, economy was meant for man, not man for the economy; I'm worrying about how much economic interests restrict us for no other reason than lining someone's pocket. Technology enables individuals to do cool ways, to build the world around themselves as they see fit, but then comes the business models that start restricting these abilities in order to squeeze more money out of people.