Beware the cloud

Certainly worth a read is Charles Leadbeater, who refers to the cloud capitalists

Facebook, Apple, Google, Salesforce, Twitter, who will seek to make money by creating and managing clouds for us.

We will, he adds

find our choices, social connection and searches being shaped by the clumsy algorithms these companies come up with and therefore his solution

1.Maintaining a diversity of funding for the development of web platforms, so that some will be social and public to complement the corporate platforms.

2.Ensuring people have a diversity of potential suppliers of cloud based services: anti-monopoly legislation covering social media and web platforms will be central.

3.Keeping open spaces for experimentation on the web, rather than allowing incumbent media companies to occupy emerging spaces.

4.Defending net neutrality rather than a system in which those that pay more — large companies

5.Ensuring people have freedom to move between suppliers of net services and content, to avoid being locked-in to cloud services provided by one supplier.