>> The only possible way to stop it, is to continue advancing computing power according to Moore's Law > services being cheaper to centralize. You are talking

>> The only possible way to stop it, is to continue advancing computing power according to Moore's Law > services being cheaper to centralize. You are talking about its relative cost, while I'm talking about the mere possibility. Back in the early 80s, having a personal workstation (not a home computer) to process private information was nearly an impossibility, not simply because it's cheaper to centralize but because it's technologically prohibitive. Even in the early 90s, I still read stories about how a hacker in a crypto community needed to import his private key every time he comes to work in the morning to read some personal messages, and to remove it again at the end of the day. The server could not be trusted and there was no alternative. And today, everyone uses Gmail and the same privacy problem is still here - the server can't be trusted, but at least, if you are personally willing to spend some money and energy on your project, it's possible to host your own. It'll never be mainstream, yes, but it's possible and Moore's Law enabled it. Maching translation, or personal assistant, on the other hand, now resembles a "personal-workstation-in-the-80s" problem. If computing power continues to advance according to Moore's Law, at least it's going to be a "Gmail-in-the-20s" problem after a decade or two. > We're fighting uphill against a law of economics. Moore's Law and personal computing, regardless of how sufficient or insufficient, is historically a balancing force. If this force continues to act upon, the level of centralization of future software applications will still be imaginable to us. But if it ceases to exist, things will become much worse. That is all I wanted to say.