Advertisers and venture capitalists pollute people's motivations and in the worst cases lead to user experience being compromised to satisfy other agendas. Kickstarter projects, app.net and Sublime Text (just from my personal experience) seem like excellent steps in the right direction: marketing directly to end users without all the nonsense and corporate financial trickery wedged in between.
There are cases where this can't work, of course. I think Wikipedia and Google should be essential public services but in the absence of an effective world government (or indeed particularly effective national ones) it doesn't seem like there's anyone who can take responsibility for them.
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Advertisers and venture capitalists pollute people's motivations and in the worst cases lead to user experience being compromised to satisfy other agendas. Kickstarter projects, app.net and Sublime Text (just from my personal experience) seem like excellent steps in the right direction: marketing directly to end users without all the nonsense and corporate financial trickery wedged in between. There are cases where this can't work, of course. I think Wikipedia and Google should be essential public services but in the absence of an effective world government (or indeed particularly effective national ones) it doesn't seem like there's anyone who can take responsibility for them.