New media companies look remarkably like the old ones they aspire to replace: male, pale, and privileged.

There was all this enthusiasm about amateurism and the idea that people could now just make videos in their bedroom, or blog news stories and share it online, and isn't this great? Now we can do it just for the love of it and not try to be professionals, corrupted by careerism.

The point is, this is what happens when advertising and data collection is the dominant business mode. We are encouraged to be compulsive. It's not that we're terrible addicts who need to go to an AA meeting and get off our gadgets.

One thing I point out is, a lot of people tooting the horn of amateurism, actually, these people were professionals. Some are professors who are employed full time. Others are marketers or business consultants.

Whether it's a professional, academic keeping people out by using certain mystifying language, or technologists presenting their work as incredibly complicated, no one can understand it (especially not "moms," who are always invoked as the ultimate know-nothings, which is incredibly insulting to a whole lot of people).

There's also the issue of tech titans throwing their weight around in Washington and lobbying. There was just a Reuters poll that reported that more than half of Americans are concerned that tech companies are "encroaching too much on their lives." That's pretty major, considering these companies were universally loved not that long ago.

On the one hand, I'm a kind of crazy anarchist-sympathizer with a hippie background, so this sounds pretty good to me. Make something for the love of it! But the reality is so much more complicated.