As he so often does, Dave Winer nails it, this time with The Un-Internet. Some pull-quotes:
At issue is this: Control.
For whatever reason, the people who run the tech companies want it. But eventually the users take it.
Either the companies learn how to take the lead from their users, or they will be sidelined. Unless the laws of technology are repealed, and I don’t think laws like that can be repealed.
It’s the Internet vs the Un-Internet. And the Internet, it seems, always prevails.
The Internet is each and all of us. It is no more reducible to the companies that try to control us than time is reducible to clocks.
I believe 2012 will be the year that Net-based companies (which are most of them at this point) will discover that free customers are more valuable than captive ones.
Here’s the deal: the Internet is already occupied: by all of us. This is why the Internet will beat the Un-Internet.
We occupy the Un-Internet as well, which is why we’re going to take charge of that too, and bring it in alignment with the free marketplace that the Internet provides in a remarkably pure form.
But we won’t be a crazy herd. We’ll be sources of help as well as money. And we’ll have our own ways of providing that help. The demand chain and the supply chain will start working together. Just watch.