Be Excellent To Each Other

FOR: Late to everything I've just started using Spotify. Review: it is very nice and I like it a lot. But It's got me thinking. I am a quite sad about how the cloud is going to end the wild west of the web. Building little cages we walk into. XBLA, iPhone Store, Google Store, Spotify. People are building gate keepers and we are lofting them upon high. Larry Lessig once said that many disruptions in media start as a two way read/write process before clever people made it all read only. Once the gatekeepers are strong enough the upstarts and individuals will be drowned out.

In addition when the gatekeepers become established enough their massive bandwith use will be used to justify the end of Net Neutrality. When we are all old and fuddy-duddy. Are children will laugh at our nostalgic pining for the days where the internet was truly 2-way, and anyone could be the next big thing.

AGAINST: Digg and reddit and sites like that will still promote the upstart so we will be fine and the democratic and allow a platform for everyone. That and having tiny little cheap netbooks that do everything online in the cloud will be awesome. Gatekeepers like the iPhone store will allow programs to be made that allow full access to our rights, out of fear they will be beaten by opensource/upstarts.

Where do you stand? Argue, debate and then, when you've decided, vote

(i'll add the poll later)

Definition of The Cloud: When all you data is stored in someone elses server and you connect to them to access it. I.e. Gmail, Spotify, Facebook etc.

Definition of Gatekeepers: Where a company positions itself to stand between you a third parties products.

You're right, of course. The money is no longer about developing clever applications - it's about monetizing how people gain access to those applications/data - whether at a network level or a device level.

The money's moving down the OSI stack.

Actually, I'll caveat that. There is something to be said for gatekeepers providing accessibility. Things like paying MS for an unbelievably easy to use online gaming network. Compared to hosting a server, handing out the IP to your mates, and connecting using ingame browsers, it's a real value-added prospect. Gatekeepers provide a valuable role in abstracting users from the underlying technology, which has been a vital part of the rise of the internet among non-geeks.

What's important, though, is that access to the underlying architecture is not restricted to only the gatekeepers, because it is vital that the cost of entry remains low in order to encourage the proliferation of internet technologies outside of the massive internet superpowers.