The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

Wow, no, this is a fundamental misunderstanding right at the core of the issue.

The 'cost' is that of 'creating and developing'- and FYI it's not 'information' - in most cases it's 'creative works' not some kind of 'discovered knowledge'.

MS Windows is a 'Developed and supported Product' - not 'Information'.

In much the same way it only costs $2 to 'make' your pair of Nike shoes - it's definitely not the 'cost of parts and labour' (though that's obviously an input).

Making anything working, of material value is usually an excessive grind involving a lot of people. 'Software' is not 'the implementation of some algorithm' it's all of the ugly complexities around that and the sausage-making realities of getting things to work well and play nicely with other platforms. And then of course it requires ongoing support, maintenance, docs, training, security updates etc.. That's real work.

In then 1990's when we 'controlled' the software that went onto our Mac/PCs ... that we didn't have access to Windows or Adobe Photoshop source code wasn't really an excessive problem.

Especially the fact that there was a clean delineation between 'OS and Software' (other than for say MS Office Products) - then it 'mostly worked'.

IP protections are absolutely not going away, for good reason, the challenge is to make those work as the situation evolves, moreover, they are not the 'real problem' frankly, as excessive platform control (i.e. Apple, now Google) represent a more fundamental issue, and consider that happens while technically most of Android is open source anyhow.

Even Linux is open and popular, and to this day it's still a mostly 'dev/interest' OS that most people don't use in their homes, partly due to distribution power controls by MS/Apple, but also because frankly managing massive real world deployments of 'Moms, Dads and frankly most people' who 'just want it to work' is an operational challenge as much as it is an R&D/Creative effort.

Consider the basic economics involved: Even reasonably smart corporations with 'good IT' still don't generally deploy Linux to regular userbase. Why not? Because $50 a year to MS is very cheap, and frankly worth every penny in terms of value created. Any 'supported' Linux variation is going to cost 'something' anyhow, so what's the difference between '$20 a year' for some 'supported Linux variation' and '$50 a year' for MW Windows? Basically nothing. In a per capita basis, the true cost of a lot of software is marginal.

The examples you provided with general human stupidity and disorder is a good one.

Another one, besides The Singularity fluff, which is very much related to your own two and which we see often today, is with AI. You can also find other examples littered in the history of sci-fi literature, especially towards real life projections, not just fantasy.

My big less was that humans are naturally inclined to massive overestimated our ability to master these systems and are terrible at projecting how these systems will also be adopted and run (typically always assuming some masterfully run corporation or government full of geniuses).

The reality is almost always extremely more underwhelming.

Not to downplay the need for things like controls on privacy or surveillance.

But even something like the NSA is probably a good example. They are capable of so much with today’s technology and do in fact work very hard to have said genius’s work there. But I’m sure general bureaucracy and institutional incompetence has stopped many of our worst imagined fears from being realized on a wide (and therefore meaningful) scale.

This sort of thinking helps us become more practical in our projections and our handling or what is possible (and a counter to knee jerk reactions for hyper control through hyperbolic and extensive law - which we’ve seen frequently elsewhere in history places such as drug prohibition and race controls, where the controls cause far worse harm than any betterment).

I also think this is why older people tend to be more conservative in their expectations. Personal failures and learned education of those in history help push us in this direction. Unbridled optimism is for the youth. And I still think an important thing for society to move forward. As long as it’s not the only voice in the room, as it seems to always want to be.