“We are not progressing from a primitive era of centralized social media to an emerging era of decentralized social media, the reverse is happening…. Surveillance and control of users is not some sort of unintended consequence of social media platforms, it is the reason they exist….Free, open systems, that neither surveil, nor control, nor exclude, will not be funded, as they do not provide the mechanisms required to capture profit….we do not have the social will nor capacity to bring these platforms to the masses, and given the dominance of capital in our society, it’s not clear where such capacity will come from. …Eliminating privilege is a political struggle, not a technical one.”

I agree.

The tools I imagine in PeerPoint ( http://almanac2010.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/peerpoint/ )are tools that we need to conduct our political struggle, not afterwards. The community that brought us Linux and Open Office is capable of bringing us PeerPoint if it understands the need. If anyone doubts this, look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open_source_software

If that community does not understand the need for a PeerPoint or equivalent, we need to make them understand it. We need to demand it, and we need to pay for it.

What are the obstacles?

Poor Richard