Alright, time for another rant:<p>Curtis sees the connection between machines, hierarchies, capitalism, and technology. Curtis aptly points out that in our world, technology has not bred equality, that rather, the very concept of ownership spits in the eye of non-hierarchical society. I also question the degree to which Silicon Valley types fundamentally believe in (socioeconomic) equality - while Rand supporters often invoke freedom, liberty, justice, etc. they generally fail to mention equality at all. Instead, they opt for lofty "rising tide" rhetoric or relate back to a "free and open web". However, Curtis is dead right about the type of fantasy that technological progress has given our world.<p>This fantasy - that if we just keep pushing forward, we can solve our problems belies a fundamental, inherent fallacy in late-capitalistic logic. That is: when the problems are necessary parts of the system, it is impossible for the system to solve them. Current nation-state-capitalism relies on a few tenets that cause many of our planet's problems. Nations and people must compete, rather than cooperate. Growth must always continue, lest we face stagnation. Property and the means of acquiring wealth must not be equally distributed, in fact, such distribution would be inherently immoral. The last point here is explicitly Randian and is at the heart of global society's moral compass. That what one man has, no other has a right to take, regardless of how that property was acquired. Thus it is <i>wrong</i> for Palestine to contest the land given to Israel at the end of the 2nd World War, it is <i>wrong</i> for young black men and women to stand on the bridges that wealthy San Franciscans take to work, it is <i>wrong</i> for the government to appropriate the wealth of Mark Zuckerberg - despite the fact that his idea and wealth was ostensibly stolen from others.<p>The fantasy of a "free web" can be only be recognized in its relation to property and ownership. While megacorps like Google and Facebook make lofty claims about freedom, they unequivocally deny that the rest of the web ought to have access to their data, their infrastructure, their systems. They support the laws that make hacking illegal, and in many cases, prove two-faced about what they really want: a free web, but with some limitations that favor them. Google, for instance, supports net neutrality but does not have any interest in limiting their own ability to profit off the web. What we end up with is a "free society" where the ultimate arbiters of justice are not beholden to society in any way - capable of setting their own rules and saying "you may enter <i>if</i> ..."