We have reached a point, at least in the U.S., where we are run by our technology. Increasingly, we are also being run by the companies that control that technology. In this UT exclusive, Beth Kotz points out that in the beginning these companies presented themselves as rebels, almost a populist revolt. Today, that is certainly not the case. A while back, I heard an interview about Amazon on NPR. The interviewee described Amazon as so much more than the standard monopoly. They said (paraphrasing) Amazon was a monopoly in the sense that it not only controls commerce, it controls the street that commerce is on, the utilities they use, and who gets to be in business, how the business is run, and the advertising they do. This is unprecedented power for a business. Back in the ‘good old days’ when the U.S. actually had anti-monopoly laws, and Ma Bell was judged a monopoly and broken up into “baby Bells”, Bell telephone may have had a monopoly on phone communication, but they did not control the post office or wire transfers. With the modern tech companies, we are dealing with a totally new category of control. It is closer to the company town than to the business monopoly.