Ben uses a mix of history, some fact, fiction and broad sweeps of historical narratives to push towards his pet theories of “aggregation” and “moats”.
I am not going to discuss “politics”, but I have referenced this article only because Internet has made it easier to distribute and share content. The fear-mongering is usually from the American version of “liberal values” (indirectly asserting control over the flow of information). Aggregators (or publishers) act as gatekeepers to drip-feed information to masses as the case may be.
An individual has the power to reject the third/fourth and fifth estate. The problematic issue with the fifth estate is that individual will is being “re-fashioned” to believe that they have control. People are so heavily invested in platforms that they cannot imagine lives without it. That’s where real freedom begins. Once you are free from the fear of missing out, things become more straightforward.
The fact of the matter is that the world is fundamentally changing, just as it did five hundred years ago. At the same time, that change will take time — the printing press was invented in Germany in 1440 and yet German unification did not happen until 1871 — and will be guided by choices we make along the way. The sooner we recognize that transformation is coming, the more readily we can reject authoritarian attempts to hold onto the world as it was, and create the world we want to see.
via The Internet and the Third Estate – Stratechery by Ben Thompson
RadOncNotes 