> But what I see developing seems driven by greed and profit...
Yes, it's called "capitalism".
> For me, the future would bring forth solutions to our needs and wants...
Check.
> design that provides value in a sustainable and responsible manner...
"Sustainable" is an extremely loaded term. Basically, you get it when the market demands it. If you see it as important, it's not a failure of the producers: it's a failure of the consumers to demand or the governments to require it.
The rest of the post talks about nascent issues of balkanization, which is the natural path of progression. Consider the examples of railroads in the US and the road system in the UK. In both cases, they were initially private endeavours that were likewise driven by "greed and profit". Arguably in both cases the high pricing stifled innovation and in both cases, the systems were eventually nationalized.
In the UK's example, nationalization fostered trade (the roads were all toll roads previously). In the case of the US railroads, nationalization can arguably be seen as a disaster so there are mixed results of this.
Ultimately though the story is one of commoditization. We are still in the pioneering days of these technologies and as time goes on they will get cheaper and ubiquitous to the point where people through the instrument of governments will start to see such services as basic rights, much as is becoming the case with Internet access, which many countries are starting to see as the "fourth utility".
"Greed and profit" propelled us from an a hunter-gatherer and agrarian existence to manned spaceflight and the global Internet. Don't be quick to dismiss or disparage "greed and profit" as there has been no greater catalyst for human advancement.
As for his talk of "open standards", I refer you to Dave McClure's "Open is for Losers" [1]. We may find open desirable philosophically but it is not the natural product of a market--at least not an immature market. Open standards are the byproduct of commoditization.
As for synchronous Internet connections:
> Why would it harm companies to provide equal access?
The predominant form of broadband access in many countries is ADSL. The "A" is asynchronous in this case. ADSL2+ is up to 24M down and 1M up (2M with Annex M). Gain more upload speed and you lose download speed. So this isn't an artificial restriction: it's giving consumers what they most likely want. You can buy SDSL links. They have lower (relative) download speeds and generally higher cost, mostly because they're a business product as a general rule.
> I fear the Internet is doomed to fail, to be replaced by tightly controlled gardens of exclusivity.
I don't. I see such walled gardens as merely transitional. The "greed and profit" that drives them pulls us all forward and makes a bucketload of money for a few in the process. For a time.
> Today it is too easy for unknown entities to penetrate into private homes and businesses, stealing identities and corporate secrets.
Not really. If you run a Windows machine directly on the Internet (ie not via a router that does NAT, etc) then you kinda get what you deserve.
The fact is, the closed devices the OP bemoans are actually much safer for such things and that's almost by definition because as soon as you get a complicated mess like Windows, faults are inevitable.
>Don't be quick to dismiss or disparage "greed and profit" as there has been no greater catalyst for human advancement.
war. While war and its related technological advances are frequently connected to "greed and profit", it is still a driver of its own. For example, Manhattan project and its people weren't driven by "greed and profit".
I guess that depends on how far you want to take causality. As in, do you want to attribute the Manhattan Project solely to the participants' endeavours or go further and attribute them to the aggressions of Hitler?
I'll certainly agree that many technological changes owe their origins to war. Rocketry is a prime example. Another is the steam engine. The ability to make pistons was a direct byproduct of the technology developed to make cannons.
War is an interesting phenomenon. By our nature, we compete. We've competed since we climbed out of the primordial ooze. Actually before.
One can view war as the ultimate means of settling accounts but even that's an incomplete picture as many wars have their origins in culture and religion.
Anyway, my point isn't that greed and profit motivated ALL advancement. The people who invented the solid state transistor but companies who fund such research do so typically with a profit motive. It's that profit motive that also takes a scientific discovery and mass produces it into something people will buy.
Without that profit motive, many such advancements might otherwise be laboratory curiosities.
> In the UK's example, nationalization fostered trade (the roads were all toll roads previously). In the case of the US railroads, nationalization can arguably be seen as a disaster so there are mixed results of this.
It's a mixed bag all around, this one. The railroads in the US were killed, for the most part, by the Interstate Highway system, an equally nationalized endeavor. But really, they were doomed by geographic reality. Population density in the US is such that in most parts of the country a car is an absolute requirement for every working adult. And gas is cheap enough (relative to the rest of the world) that it's cost effective to rely on trucks and airplanes to move merchandise.
If you privatized Amtrak tomorrow, you'd still see full rail service up and down the Boston-NYC-DC corridor. But running a train through "flyover" country is a waste of money from the get-go.
Part of the issue with rail is that it takes to long compared to the alternatives. This is not really a failing of rail as a technology, but a failure of investment in infrastructure. Outside of the Boston-NYC-DC corridor, the trains can't go as fast due to the rails (IIRC they have to slow down to 35mph). If the infrastructure investment had been there, train travel could be a viable alternative to air travel.
> But what I see developing seems driven by greed and profit...
Yes, it's called "capitalism".
> For me, the future would bring forth solutions to our needs and wants...
Check.
> design that provides value in a sustainable and responsible manner...
"Sustainable" is an extremely loaded term. Basically, you get it when the market demands it. If you see it as important, it's not a failure of the producers: it's a failure of the consumers to demand or the governments to require it.
The rest of the post talks about nascent issues of balkanization, which is the natural path of progression. Consider the examples of railroads in the US and the road system in the UK. In both cases, they were initially private endeavours that were likewise driven by "greed and profit". Arguably in both cases the high pricing stifled innovation and in both cases, the systems were eventually nationalized.
In the UK's example, nationalization fostered trade (the roads were all toll roads previously). In the case of the US railroads, nationalization can arguably be seen as a disaster so there are mixed results of this.
Ultimately though the story is one of commoditization. We are still in the pioneering days of these technologies and as time goes on they will get cheaper and ubiquitous to the point where people through the instrument of governments will start to see such services as basic rights, much as is becoming the case with Internet access, which many countries are starting to see as the "fourth utility".
"Greed and profit" propelled us from an a hunter-gatherer and agrarian existence to manned spaceflight and the global Internet. Don't be quick to dismiss or disparage "greed and profit" as there has been no greater catalyst for human advancement.
As for his talk of "open standards", I refer you to Dave McClure's "Open is for Losers" [1]. We may find open desirable philosophically but it is not the natural product of a market--at least not an immature market. Open standards are the byproduct of commoditization.
As for synchronous Internet connections:
> Why would it harm companies to provide equal access?
The predominant form of broadband access in many countries is ADSL. The "A" is asynchronous in this case. ADSL2+ is up to 24M down and 1M up (2M with Annex M). Gain more upload speed and you lose download speed. So this isn't an artificial restriction: it's giving consumers what they most likely want. You can buy SDSL links. They have lower (relative) download speeds and generally higher cost, mostly because they're a business product as a general rule.
> I fear the Internet is doomed to fail, to be replaced by tightly controlled gardens of exclusivity.
I don't. I see such walled gardens as merely transitional. The "greed and profit" that drives them pulls us all forward and makes a bucketload of money for a few in the process. For a time.
> Today it is too easy for unknown entities to penetrate into private homes and businesses, stealing identities and corporate secrets.
Not really. If you run a Windows machine directly on the Internet (ie not via a router that does NAT, etc) then you kinda get what you deserve.
The fact is, the closed devices the OP bemoans are actually much safer for such things and that's almost by definition because as soon as you get a complicated mess like Windows, faults are inevitable.
TL:DR the sky isn't falling.
[1]: http://venturebeat.com/2010/05/19/dave-mcclure-open-is-for-l...