@fluidlogic Forgot to add: People often go on about Neal Stephenson's Snowcrash as metaphor for our times, but I actually think his Diamond Age was in many ways far more prescient of some of the developments we're seeing now:

- the rise of a global corporate oligarchy (Neo-Victorians in the novel) which centrally controls The Source (aka The Cloud in our world) and The Feed, aka a mixed stream of energy, media and basic molecules, which can be used to assemble goods by matter compilers
- the breakdown/diminishing roles of nation states and emergence of sovereign oligarchy-controlled cities/jurisdictions (aka Free economic zones)
- social reorganization into phyles/tribes, either based on economic standing and/or skills/culture/religion or "Thetes" (aka outcasts & stateless people)
- the creation of Seed technology as distributed inversion principle of The Source, fully distributed creation/organization (aka open source culture)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age

#NealStephenson #DiamondAge