It's true that technology advancement requires capital and seemingly absent military threats the government is happy to allow private interests to supply that capital.
There's another distinction to be made which is also useful, that between open and closed systems. The PC ecosystem in the 1980s democratized computing yet was privately funded, so I don't think the private funding barrier is impossible to overcome when trying to make progress.
One thing I don't hear much about is how any system that relies heavily on a large database produces concentration. The internet era came to be dominated by companies with huge databases.
That's different from the PC era. This is mostly just a technology yo-yo between centralized systems and decentralized systems over the years, and you have to ride out the storm when your favored flavor is on the outs.
Techno-optimists should be focused on building decentralized databases and many are. Until we've solved the problem of systems with huge databases outperforming systems with decentralized databases, concentration will continue.
There's another distinction to be made which is also useful, that between open and closed systems. The PC ecosystem in the 1980s democratized computing yet was privately funded, so I don't think the private funding barrier is impossible to overcome when trying to make progress.
One thing I don't hear much about is how any system that relies heavily on a large database produces concentration. The internet era came to be dominated by companies with huge databases.
That's different from the PC era. This is mostly just a technology yo-yo between centralized systems and decentralized systems over the years, and you have to ride out the storm when your favored flavor is on the outs.
Techno-optimists should be focused on building decentralized databases and many are. Until we've solved the problem of systems with huge databases outperforming systems with decentralized databases, concentration will continue.