The wisdom that experience can bring means I now look at statements like “organizing the world’s information” through a very different lens. Google’s mission statement was something I did not view as coercive, because I didn’t understand the power exerted by those who collect and organize data.
Deciding where “this” belongs ends up exerting influence over how “this” will be perceived, accessed, and considered. All centralized platforms effectively exert dominion over the data/content stored within, which implicitly places the users of those platforms as subservient to the platform.
Centralized platforms are useful however, Wikipedia as an example. Centralization can build trust, reputation, and allow for users to quickly accomplish their goals.
I run a lot of my own services, so I understand the cost associated with decetnralization and the unrealistic expectations that sets on most people. In my opinion, decentralization doesn’t inherently afford any additional freedoms.
When engaging with a centralized system, I find myself asking more about their governance and incentive structures. A centralized system which has democratically elected directors and multiple independent sources of income to sustain operations is functionally much more free than a thousand decentralized systems all running the same software, in the same cloud, and distributed by a single entity, etc.
In hindsight, I see now how dystopian “organizing the world’s information” is when uttered as a stated goal of a multinational for-profit corporation.