Informant38

Customer empowerment sounds terrific: people design their own tools and goods, and use them to their own ends. But hey, people are people. What a lot of folks really want from the Dell dude's computer is a cool, convenient way to copy Disney movies. That leads to a heavy exchange of legal fire in the U.S. Congress. Next time you order a DVD player, you may find that Mickey Mouse is your personal commissar.

Factories remain powerful devices for transforming matter and energy--wholesale. People shun the vicinity of a factory, for though factories are improving, they're a long way from good for us. They're harsh and fearsome structures whose evil by-products include high voltage, traffic, shipping accidents, brownfields, grayfields, and lasting toxins in the water table. The real "consumer sacrifices" from mass production include scary transformations in the atmosphere and a harsh remaking of the Earth's surface, including the loss of our ozone layer and even a big chunk of Antarctica. You may never see carcinogens and mutagens, but you carry them far more intimately than you ever will carry a Sony Walkman. Someday, sure as your Visa and MasterCard bills, payment will come due.

Bruce Sterling in MetropolisMag