The future of general-purpose computing is pretty bleak, and what a great loss that will be.

Most people don’t care, even though the effect on their lives is immense. I used to hesitate (ok, not very much) to term these people stupid, but really they are. In practice, in the real world, when you care not a bit about something that will make your world very much worse, you are stupid. There is no other word for it.

Of course it is hard to fight against the propaganda and FUD foisted onto us by an increasingly corporation-dominated world.

General purpose computers will never go away, of course. They can’t – else no content could ever be created, no new programs could ever be written, etc.

However, I suspect they will be increasingly restricted legally, and eventually will require special, expensive licenses to operate.

Probably by 2025, if you are government-approved for a “general purpose computer” license, you will hand over your $10,000, all your activities will be monitored, and the license will require renewal every year.

That’s best guess.

Worst guess I don’t even want to think about.

File sharers buy 30% more music than non-P2P peers.

Well, duh. Completely obvious. If it weren’t for file sharing the past decade, I’d probably have spent less than $50 on music of any sort, including concert tickets.

With file sharing, I’ve spent closer to $1,000.

The RIAA’s quest to stop file sharing has nothing to do with protecting artists or creating incentives to make more music – it’s all about protecting a business model that harms artists and fans.