Existential ComicsCapitalism didn't give us the internet.
Large-scale cooperation, open protocols, and free software gave us the internet. Capitalism gave us mobile sites that don't work because fifteen ads cover the screen.
Kagan MacTane (he/him)> Large-scale cooperation, open protocols, and free software gave us the internet.
Also government. The foundations of the internet started as US government research projects. That's why, to this day, reverse DNS lookups include references to the `in-addr.arpa` domain, with ARPA being the Advanced Research Projects Agency.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.arpa
I am no fan of government, but I gotta give them their due on this.
(But yes, very much agreed on "not capitalism"! 👍🏻💯)
Daniel Lakeland@kagan
I feel like govt and capitalism had the same role. They didn't give us the internet, they directed resources via finance. They gave in essence "permission" for the researchers to do their thing. They gave "permission" for people to scale up data centers and lay fiber and etc.
They like to take credit. But if permission weren't required wed have the internet instead of browsers and phones that spy on you. The permission holds us back, but is sold as progress
@existentialcomics
Bram Moreinis@dlakelan @kagan @existentialcomics I love your reframe. Before industrial capitalism, any resource-intensive projects that could not be done in hobby time frames needed to be sponsored by the Rothchilds or Josef II. But history does not award authorship of these discoveries and projects to their funders.