From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@turbont.net)
Date: Sun Mar 19 2000 - 16:00:35 MST
John Calvin wrote:
>
> >>I would have to disagree. At the current time, corporations and other
> >>large "elite" groups can wield far more computing power than you can
> >>possibly buy. Even if you get all your friends together ala SETI. IBM
> >>is going to have a petaflop computer in just a few years. All cheaper
> >>computer chips mean is that the corporations can still buy many more
> >>of them than you. I will admit that the Internet is quite an empowering
> >>invention for the individual, buts lets face it that big money still
> >>matters
> There is more at issue here, the ownership of lots of computing power does not necessarily = the control of that computing power. My personal experience of this comes from working for the federal government. The agency I work for has lots of computers, and access to several large mainframes, but the control is distributed between many competing interests(read divisions)and ultimately control lies in the hands of the thousands of individuals using the systems. Further my experience with private companies (especially corporate giants) tells me that the private sector is not a whole lot different in this regard. The inertia of bureacracy negatively impacts the "power" of the megacorp.
Exactly. Look at this one guy who employs a handful of people and has
his own supercomputer. He's beating the pants off of the government
people in decoding the genome, and because the government hates being on
the losing end, is now trying to socialize his results.
Mike Lorrey
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