&gt;the point is, we, collectively, are losing control of our use of computing and technology.<p>That assumes that &quot;we collectively&quot; were ever in control.<p>The reality is that these breakthrough technologies, no matter what the century, took massive amounts of money and time to become adopted and by and large they were built by the bigs in some fashion - either through license deals or direct investment from IBM, US Government etc...<p>Sure there have been FOSS wins, but if you look at the major technologies, basically since forever they were funded and owned by big corporations.