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Monetization & Monopolies: How The Internet You Loved Died | Conrad Bastable

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Nothing lasts forever. All technologies have their moment in the spotlight — then the wheel of progress turns and a new challenger arises, one better adapted to the environment. Progress is a cruel master. Just because a given company managed to fundamentally advance the frontier of technology doesn’t mean they’ll have a strong defense against the next challenger. The lesson of technology is the exact opposite: each society-transforming success story in Tech creates the conditions for its own replacement by funding the development of the next wave of progress…and then letting someone else execute on it, totally disrupting their monopoly. But in the meantime, for a brief moment, we all benefit from their market dominance. Pictured: the guy I’m about to try and defend in this essay. A friend informs me after reading: “this is your weirdest stance, and I mean it.” The amount of money you can make in today’s global technology market by capturing market share is absurd. It enables industrie

Or Why Tech Monopolies Are Actually Good For Society Hold on! Stow the pitchforks! Hear me out. Nothing lasts forever. All technologies have their moment in the spotlight — then the wheel of progress turns and a new challenger arises, one better adapted to the environment. Progress is a cruel master. Just because a given company managed to fundamentally advance the frontier of technology doesn’t mean they’ll have a strong defense against the next challenger. The lesson of technology is the exact opposite: each society-transforming success story in Tech creates the conditions for its own replac

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