Certainly, but we know what the likely alternatives were at the time: telco walled gardens (Minitel) or dialup services (AOL).
I maintain that building the internet without an integrated billing system was its most impressively radical choice. If a telco had been involved they'd have built the billing first then worked out what limited range of services they felt like selling, on which they would try to keep as much of the margin as possible rather than letting third parties profit.
The economy of monetized information would be much smaller, since you would need to "buy in"; no Wikipedia, no Stackexchange, no free courses, no free software, no free maps.
> A monetized information economy will create a strong middle class
This very much depends on whether information is a form of labour or a form of capital. What's the information equivalent of "r > g"?
I maintain that building the internet without an integrated billing system was its most impressively radical choice. If a telco had been involved they'd have built the billing first then worked out what limited range of services they felt like selling, on which they would try to keep as much of the margin as possible rather than letting third parties profit.
The economy of monetized information would be much smaller, since you would need to "buy in"; no Wikipedia, no Stackexchange, no free courses, no free software, no free maps.
> A monetized information economy will create a strong middle class
This very much depends on whether information is a form of labour or a form of capital. What's the information equivalent of "r > g"?