Dave points (with surprisingly little comment) to the disheartening convergence of two corporate interests both of which think that the next business model involves control, control, and more control.
No one should take what I say as though I were an MBA from Kellogg School (where I had a cup of coffee this week, and felt as though I’d entered the Bizarro-World opposite of the tech conferences I’ve been to: almost all ThinkPads, with an occasional rare iBook). On the other hand, my ideas aren’t peculiar to me — people who’ve best-selling business books will tell you the same thing.
The next business model may not be located in the sun-shine-y, mellow, free, oh wow, give-it-away, “We’re all feeding each other” territory that I envision, but the path toward the next business model passes through there.
And it surely doesn’t lie in the highly-controlled environment where MSFT and the NYT are building.