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Seamlessness of thought as intellectual monocropping

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