Two of the posts I wrote only an hour or so ago have already been replicated automatically into spam chunks on random blogs and websites run by God Only Knows™. One clone block was triggered by the word “insurance” and another cluster was triggered by the word “authority,” I think. It’s not always perfectly apparent what causes these content-cloning attempts. Ever since I have released all of my content into the wild though, via a Public Domain dedication late last year, I’m not too worried about these sort of automated grabbings of things I’ve written. Any actual real person is welcome to do this, and even to publish books and all other kinds of works based on what I have done on this website and continue to do.

If nothing else, it makes me think through the implications of current internet ownership trends. Microsoft, for example, recently has made a hostile bid for Yahoo. Google is calling in it’s “Don’t Be Evil” card, saying that this move further demonstrates Microsoft’s dangerous past precedences of trying to dominate markets with proprietary technology. The difference between that and Google’s tactic though is that Google simply realized they can dominate markets by GIVING away technology, instead of with-holding it.

Each approach, I think, has its place, depending on what the technology is for. Microsoft, I think, is trying to make itself look dominant in a marketplace which it is failing in though, and I know Google smells blood in the water. Once Google snaps up the major share of analogue TV signals after the digital switch occurs, we’ll see this trend come through to completion. MicroSoft, I predict will push more and more into high-end robotics, and virtual & augmented reality simulations (multi-layered perceptual experiences of overlapping realms), leaving Google to it’s “look-up service” platform, and open-ended information-management tools. Google has already killed Office, really.

What this means is that at some point in the near future, we’ll see a greater and greater balkanization of internets (”Many Internets Theory”), each organized around a proprietary topology and interface device. You’ll have a MicroSoft-brand internet, a Nintendo Wii-brand internet, a BlackBerry-brand internet, a Wikipedia-centric internet, (just as examples) along with various degrees of pirate and spam internets existing in the spaces between the behemoths.

So I envision some point in the future, where a person who is trying to access a certain type and quality of information will simply not be able to, because the information density and integrity on the network which they are riding forbids access. Thus, people in certain circumstances will be reduced to collecting scraps and fragments of information from various dodgy spam-based sources. Which means I’m happy to help spread good quality sound-bytes for use in the lawless digital wastelands to come.