Technology, as futurists like George Orwell and Arthur Clarke have been predicting for decades, will be the battleground on which the fight against corporatism is played out. The United States has become a corporate republic, with the takeover of cyberspace one of that republic's primary goals. From sweetheart regulatory legislation for media companies and telcoms to the Children's Internet Protection Act to Carnivore and the DMCA, they're working on it. Small entrepeneurs are falling like flies, just as little diners, family eateries, and small farms and meatpackers have fallen before McDonald's and Burger King. In fact, technology and fast food, profoundly intertwined, serve as useful metaphors for the unintended consequences that accompany scientific advances.
Fast food is central to urban and suburban sprawl and to the rise of malls as retailing forces.
Fast food has created a generation of new, mostly lousy jobs, cemented the divisions between rich and poor, triggered an epidemic of obesity, and sparked resentment of America's so-called cultural imperialism abroad. It's the stepchild of post-war progress in farming, slaughtering and packing, refrigeration and transportation. Fast food practices are already shaping tech industries, too, from computing to software to bio-tech. A case study is exactly what Eric Schlosser provides in his new book Fast Food Nation . In the 1970s, he reminds us, political activists were already warning about the McDonaldization of America in much the same way that hackers, programmers and open source advocates are sounding the alarm about the Microsoft-ing of the Net.