The Internet, we were told, would remove middlemen and intermediaries. It would suddenly be possible to E-mail a CEO whom even his wife couldn't reach by telephone during business hours. This, of course, was a pipe dream.
Corporations love intermediaries.
Intermediaries are with us still. And I won't insult your intelligence by attempting to explain how corporations have not merely colonized the Internet but conquered it outright. And anyway, we are dealing with the World Wide Web. In fact, nearly every country on earth now actively oversees its own domain registrations, in most cases under the two-letter country codes assigned by the International Organization for Standardization. The problem Let's say you want to hang out your own online shingle.