Okay, I guess I see some value there. The problem is that my motivation is fundamentally political, and centralized services are basically autocracies. I suppose it&#x27;s a good thing that people can emigrate more easily now, thereby forcing dictators to compete with each other to attract subjects - but I wasn&#x27;t looking for a benevolent dictatorship, I wanted us to kick the whole hierarchy over and use our shiny new communication tools to organize a happy self-regulating democracy. What frustrates me about your article is not that I think you&#x27;re wrong, because I don&#x27;t have sufficient knowledge to make such a claim: what bugs me is the fear that you&#x27;re right, which would mean that we failed to get the job done and now the window of opportunity has closed. I guess a more benevolent dictatorship is an improvement, but it&#x27;s a sufficiently small improvement that it leaves me feeling like the last 15 or so years of Internet development were basically a waste of time.