Monday Musings–19FEB24

Read two books this week. Both on just about thesame subject. The first Grunch of Giants, was. published in 1981 and is more for historical value, But Bucky got a lot of stuff right, although this book was not about solutions. He alludes to his previous book Critical Path (or https://archive.org/details/LIBRORBuckminsterFullerCriticalPath/page/n29/mode/2up) for those.

Examines the evolution of multinational corporations, from the military-industrial complex of the postwar period to the present world economic crisis, and evaluates the economic and political impact of such entities on the American and international economic systems

You can get this book at Amazon (Kindle) or as a free download at Archive .org

The other book is Cory Doctorow’s The Internet Con. which you can get at various places:

The platforms locked us into their systems and made us easy pickings, ripe for extraction. Twitter, Facebook and other Big Tech platforms hard to leave by design. They hold hostage the people we love, the communities that matter to us, the audiences and customers we rely on. The impossibility of staying connected to these people after you delete your account has nothing to do with technological limitations: it’s a business strategy in service to commodifying your personal life and relationships.
We can – we must – dismantle the tech platforms. In The Internet Con, Cory Doctorow explains how to seize the means of computation, by forcing Silicon Valley to do the thing it fears most: interoperate. Interoperability will tear down the walls between technologies, allowing users leave platforms, remix their media, and reconfigure their devices without corporate permission.
Interoperability is the only route to the rapid and enduring annihilation of the platforms. The Internet Con is the disassembly manual we need to take back our internet.

Even direct from Cory himself: https://craphound.com/shop/

Cory has more of a solution to the problem than Fuller, which at this is more historical than something you could use in this era,and the book is highly recommended.

I’ve given you links to 2 versions of the books that you can get as EPubs. Some of you may not know how to read these on a kindle. Well it’s fairly easy, here’s the page on Amazon that explains it. https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/

That’s it for me this week. Don’t forget to put pants on when you go outside.

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