Move Fast and Break Things summary

The idea of a big bad government can be traced in part to a generation of libertarians born in the US in the 1980s. Many of them were inspired by the works of novelist Ayn Rand and the economic philosophy of Milton Friedman. As such, they were committed to opposing government regulations and taxation, under Rand’s premise that selfishness and a survival of the fittest ethos are beneficial for society.

One of the most significant guiding forces for libertarianism in the tech world is Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal.

Today, Google has an 88 percent market share on all searches and advertising, while Facebook has a 77 percent share of social media. Why aren’t there rules against such monopolizing? To answer this, we need to go all the way back to the founding fathers.

While a visiting dignitary in Europe, Thomas Jefferson got a first-hand account of how much damage a monopoly can cause by witnessing the terrible effect the East India Trading Company had on Britain.

As of 2017, the 62 richest people on the Forbes Top 400 list have as much wealth as the poorest 50 percent of the world’s population. It’s also worth noting that eight of the top ten wealthiest people made their money from technology.

One way of making money on the internet is by charging rent.

In 2005, an enterprising man named Kim Dotcom launched Megaupload; a website that allowed anyone to upload a movie or music file while giving bonuses to those who uploaded large numbers of files.

In just two years, Dotcom’s service collected around 12 billion unique files, earning over $174 million in revenue. Megaupload users accounted for 4 percent of global internet traffic due primarily to the sharing of pirated content.

There’s a new saying in today’s connected world: If you’re not the customer, you’re the product. It‘s a phrase that suggests no part of the internet isn’t doing some sort of business. That business often involves the collection of data, and it’s companies like Google and Facebook that are at the forefront of this data-harvesting.

A lot of people still see Google as a friendly company offering a free service to help them find what they’re looking for. But the reality is that every time you use Google, they’re collecting as much data from you as they can, which they in turn sell to someone else.

Is it possible to have an open internet without massive, invasive and corrupting tech corporations? Can we stop the giants? The answer is: Yes we can.

But first we need to cooperate – after all, cooperation has been at the heart of humanity’s success so far, and it can continue to help us now.

Although the internet has proven less than helpful to many of the artists who find their work being illegally distributed, it may also be the platform that allows them to take back control of their futures.

In recent years streaming services like Netflix and Spotify have become increasingly popular, though they’ve been quite bad at generating income for artists. But there may be a way for artists to band together to fix this.