Today I realized that the death of shareware is a reflection of the death of the 1st Amendment and the absorption of power to control all software on machines, and thus the control of populaces. Hardly a jarring realization, had I been paying attention. But, I hadn't. The rise of Apple and its iPhone, which today banned ICE trackers from its online store, has now brought with it the death of individual freedoms--an inevitable result of allowing the concentration of corporate power to the point of monopoly or oligopoly. (Note, that given there are two separate channels, Apple/Android--but each channel is exclusive in terms of the software platform and thus software, . The inability for people sitting at home alone, or with a few friends or collaborators, to create and distribute broadly uncensored programs as shareware or freeware without the intercession of a capitalist monopoly (which controls with plenary power) distribution of software to broad swaths of society. The advent of new technology--which allowed the carrying of computers in our pockets more powerful than those giant computers of the 1950s that took up rooms and even buildings--has turned out to be the new shackles of humanity--well those not in the .0001% anyway. Because we were used to having so much, perhaps we didn't realize how much was at risk by giving up our agency in the ways we did, voluntarily (as voluntarily as possible in a society that has elevated capitalism into a religion--the religion of our times. It has always been thus, with few exceptions. I don't mean to say I believe techno-slavery or techno- feudalism (Yanis Varoufakis) was inevitable. It was not.
Clearly, the old-guard capitalists are quickly becoming anachronistic if not superfluous by the rapid changes of technology. Broadcast television is barely alive. Cable is worse. Things that people use that aren't directly from the service industry, is now largely controlled or whatever consumer industry is not yet dead from online competition, are largely waning. Our techno-overlords are real, and we need a new power trio to record the new 2112.
