Next: Computer Science or Computer Secrecy
Up: Problem statement
Previous: Hegemony of the software
A varied supply of ideas, like biodiversity, leads to
advancement in thought, and new paradigms in computing.
Thus a single entity controlling all the world's supply of
software, and in some sense, thought (e.g. a single
entity providing all of the world's WWW browsers, and
therefore, in some sense influencing the world's Internet
content, or a single entity providing all of the world's
dictionaries or automatic spell checking programs, in some
sense influencing the use of language), could
reduce the world's diversity of thought.
Seamlessness of thought may reduce
intellectual diversity, in the same way that monocropping
reduces biodiversity.
Steve Mann
1998-09-15