Lunch Talk: TEDx, the battle for power on the Internet.

Bruce Schneier talks about the problem of control over data on the Internet.



In chapter 22 ("Seeing the Invisible: The System behind the New Internet") of our favorite book, we discuss the mechanism of Control that Internet users delegated to private companies in return for subsidized devices and services. Essentially, the users traded their long-term digital futures for short-term economic and status gains. In economics, it is called Future Discounting. Paradoxically, the original idea that on the web everything is free AND there are no strings attached to the content turned into a familiar trade-off: "free stuff with lots of strings attached." As usual, a recipe for success became a recipe for disaster.