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07/30/2007: "While democracy distracts, elites are in control"

USER-GENERATED content — from Wikipedia to YouTube to open-source software — is generating waves of excitement. But the opening of innovation to wider numbers of people obscures another trend: many of the most popular new products, like the iPod, are dominated by a top-down, elite innovation model that doesn’t allow for customization.

To be sure, experts like Eric von Hippel, a management professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argue that the proliferation of “user-generated” designs signals the “democratizing” of innovation. Armed with inexpensive digital tools and networks, ordinary people, he says, can band together to push their own innovations. They also can hijack existing technologies, taking them in directions only dimly envisioned by the original creators.

[ Did you really think WikiPedia and YouTube amounted to anything? Haha, while you were distracted, they owned you. Morons. ]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/business/yourmoney/29ping.html?_r=2&oref=slogi&oref=slogin