Brian Reynolds was prescient af. A quote from Alpha Centauri:

"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."

Shame that he went on to work for Zynga. Talk about wasted potential...

So that's where he went! Alpha Centauri is my favorite civ-type game, and it even kind of soured me on all Civilization games after the second one.

Even though it's not the same, and in my opinion still not as great as AC, if you liked that game I can highly recommend Stellaris.

> Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.

Excellent quote!

Then it is an encouraging sign that this is being discussed openly.

Books aren't distributed and written the same way they used to be.

Unfortunately, for the most part of the world, schoolbooks still are written the same way: Pretty long preparation phase, followed by a very short evaluation phase, followed by some politicians deciding whether the book will be the official book for counties/states/countries. The same politicians who would have to answer future students, why they did not intervene when the [then] hero was incarcerated for the same thing she is applauded for in some Utopos.

They really aren't. If you want to scratch your head, read about Bowker and ISBN.

So I just googled "Bowker", never having heard of them before, but I have a suspicion Google only serves me the version of the story that Bowker itself is telling the world. However, using wikipedia:

> "Bowker is the exclusive U.S. agent for issuing International Standard Book Numbers (ISBNs), a universal method of identifying books in print. (...) It is now owned by Cambridge Information Group."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.R._Bowker

Cambridge Information Group? click

> "Cambridge Information Group (CIG) is a privately owned group of information services and publishing companies and educational institutions."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Information_Group

Ok... that kind of sounds like conflicts of interest waiting to happen. Not to mention ISBNs being the kind of fundamental infrastructure/natural monopoly combination where I definitely would not want to see a for-profit entity be in charge of it.

But that's just my gut-feelings. How does this set-up play out in practice?

Well researched, apologies for my sloth!

In a nutshell they have a monopoly and their fees for licensing are extortionate - and they won't even talk to you unless you're "very serious".

They crushed a startup I consulted with eight years or so ago by playing along and then vastly increasing their fees just prior to launch.

Also, their only API (I haven't checked but I doubt things have changed) is EDI.

So, they have important and valuable data that they don't like to license, and make hard to access when they do.

I don't think that something of such importance should be in the hands of a private entity.

Maybe someone could use the blockchain to issue some kind of ISBN numbers...

School curriculum's are though.