Mmmm, aaa ya sure.
Rab
Do any of them have an army?
>> Can any government, acting alone, shut down or meaningfully regulate these Internet giants?
I don’t know, but government intervention is not required to shut them down.
They are businesses.
To shut them down, it’s sufficient that the masses simply stop patronizing them.
You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won’t have it. You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations; there are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There is no third world. There is no west. There is only one holistic system of systems; one vast interwoven, interacting, multivariate multinational dominion of dollars. Petrodollars, electrodollars, reichmarks, rubles, rin, pounds and shekels.
It is the international system of currency that determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic, subatomic and galactic structure of things today. It is the international system of currency that determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things. You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and you will atone!
Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and Democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and Dupont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.
What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state? Karl Marx? They pull out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, and minimax solutions and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments just like we do.
We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale! It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live to see that perfect world in which there is no war or famine, oppression or brutality.
One vast and ecumenical holding company for whom all men will work to serve a common profit and in which all men will own a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you to preach this evangel. - Arthur Jensen (Network - 1976)
Friendship. Sex. Morality. Fatherhood. Insight. Lifetime.
Jealousy. Loneliness. Rebellion. Rape. Dejection. Death.
Appreciation. Imagination. Understanding. Foundation. Action. Creation.
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One script kiddy hacker/virus maker or EMP strike away from global reset button.
Paradigm shift happens. Those global giants got to the top by employing disruptive technology, and will fall by it as well, when the next, next “insanely great” thing comes along.