&quot;without the motive power of capital, things move slowly&quot;<p><i>slowly</i>?! We&#x27;ve amassed huge collections of detailed knowledge in mere decades, and it&#x27;s all searchable and discoverable.<p>&quot;not one big pool of knowledge&quot;<p>The real fantasy is centralization and taxonomies of everything. Distributed isn&#x27;t a lazy thing we&#x27;ve settled on; it&#x27;s the best approach. Each island grows about as far as it makes sense, and connects to other islands where it makes sense.<p>Sure, it may be imperfect and some datasets are hidden in corporations, but open data is certainly a healthy and growing ecosystem in no danger of extinction.