Saturday, August 28, 2010

God-Emperors of internet ?

I am a bit worried these days seeing Facebook grow (remember the founder's goals ...)

I was always a big fan of Dune, and while I am no expert about internet strategies, both Google and FB make me think about the plot of the last book in the Dune series, God-Emperor of Dune.

In this book, Leto, an expanded human, has mutated so as to understand (and somehow control) all the possible futures of humanity. The idea is to preserve humanity from extinction, but the means to achieve this is just perfect totalitarism ... built to self-destroy so that humanity will not be tempted again by "safety"...

Similarly, FB and Google self-proclaimed missions (organize and make available ALL human information) can be seen as positive goals. I am aware that, from a capitalist point of view, it is just monopoly in the making, but that is not the point I am trying to make ...

My point is that, if I follow Frank Hervert's plot, to really succeed, Facebook or Google (the one that wins the coming battle) will have to die and dissolve itself into the internet ... after it has given it all its assets.

In fact, and if I take Anderson's point of view about the coming death of the web, Google could be seen as the white knight that fights to preserve the WWW , even tough it has to perfectly dominate it to achieve that (Buzz, Wave, Google Friend Connect, ...). And after that, Google has to accept voluntary death ... that is, dissolve itself into the Commons ... Not the most likely outcome ?

Well, otherwise, and from a least poetic point of view, I hope regulators are muscling up, because the game is going to get tough ...