Digital monopolies

So I updated my web page design and made it probably a bit more minimalistic. It now looks a tad bit more like Medium. And hopefully encourage me to write more articles there – the longer form ones. At least long by definition of a web article. This design might be a bit more mobile-friendly as well, which might suit the audience I’m now targeting: young millennial civil servants, professionals, entrepreneurs looking to create the future. The new theme I’m using is Seedlet; and it probably helps that it is updated to integrate the new WordPress block editor system.

I wanted to say something about how the world of digital products has changed the way we consume the latest product – in the sense that the product gets ‘updated’ across the board. For example, all WordPress.com users will have the block editor when it eventually gets rolled out. The problem is that we don’t technically have a choice even if we don’t really want it. This is both a good and bad thing.

For stuff we want, that solves our problems or improve our performance related to exactly we had bought that product for, it’s a plus. That way, you don’t have to increase your expenditure on it; and you’re probably just paying the same subscription fees. So the payment basically comes from you staying on the service, or getting more sticky with it.

For features or functions that we did not want, or prefer not to have, it’s like getting something we didn’t sign up for. Even if implicit in the consumption of the product at the beginning, we have already given the rights for the company/provider to force us to take on whatever they gives us later on. In some sense, digital product/service providers who are running a subscription business basically has a pretty strong local monopoly over you.

Just pointing that out. So that we can try to make sure they ‘don’t be evil’.