La guerra de las plataformas

What is behind the so-called platform war? Is it about getting subscribers or something else? Is it a new war? The fight between streaming platforms to dominate the market is but the most recent chapter in the war for control of the media of culture, knowledge, memory and fiction that has been waged since ancient times. The supports change, but the struggle is essentially the same: the papyri, the parchments, the first libraries, the medieval copyists, the passage to the printed book, the kinetoscope and the patent war unleashed by Edison, the cinema, the VHS and the Beta, Macintosh and Windows, Netscape and Microsoft, Google and Facebook, and now Netflix, HBO, Amazon and other contenders fighting for the hegemony of innovation, control and power.