The Last days of Intellectual Capitalism....

Everything is going to change now! And the "changebringer" is going to be "doable knowhow", Yes, I am using this phrase instead of using the cliched word "technology" just because to point out that technology as we know it today might itself change in a big way!. Future technologies might not be something which we would use daily for our common needs but instead can cater to meet only our entertainment/pleasure requirements. Gone are the days when easily distinguishable seminal inventions like the the automobile, petroleum, telephone or the airplane created new capitalists like Rockefeller, Henry Ford and Graham Bell, who started shaping the industrial history of almost the entire 20th Century by creating knowledge which they got legally protected in their proprietary intellectual properties. Moreover, they also succeeded in keeping large sections of common people away from gaining access to those proprietary knowledege. This lineage of intellectual capitalism continued from Standard Oil Corporation to Microsoft Corporation. But, lately things have started changing. And this changing process is here to stay. For example look at Google, Linux and Wikipedia. They all started as small endeavours by their respective creators but slowly moved on to become huge business successes based on their high user centredness. The way Google targets internet users to introduce its new web based software services, clearly shows its reluctance in traditional ways of proprietary software usage. Linux, the open source opearting system which is threatening all major corporations who develop and market software products with protected source code, also
relies on user/developer contribution for its functional growth. Lastly, what Wikipedia is doing is providing user created/edited content back to the users themselves. Therefore, the shift from protectionism to a more liberalized way conducting intellctual businesses is clearly evident.