Do you feel like technology has thus far failed it's idealistic goal to liberate the people from the oppression of the 'old system' ?

Instead of technology changing the system for the benefit of all, as was (and to some extent still is) the idealistic hope of hackers, we ended up with a system which regulates, dictates and controls technology for the benefit of the few ?

War on 'piracy', patents, privacy and personal information used and abused by corporations, governments, financial schemes, ... the list can go on and on.

Does it seem like instead of freeing the people, we (the hackers) have build great technology which ended up in the hands of the 'old system' and gave them powerful tools to exercise even more control and oppression ?

A digital world is a place for your mind to 'live' in. We achieve this by making 'interfaces' to the digital reality, which are compatible with the user's senses - visual, auditory, touch. This way the brain is stimulated into 'believing' it and becomes part of the hardware-software machine.

Of course, we are about half way there - the next step is emulating the rest of the senses - smell, temperature as well as sensations - pain, pleasure, etc.
I guess all of this can be achieved with a computer-brain interface and I personally think I'll see this during my lifetime.

So yeah, there's room for invention, but I think we're getting closer and closer to perfection in many areas.

There must be someone to mention the Beowulf cluster of these !
So here, I've mentioned it :)

People still have difficulty disconnecting the concept of information from physical carrier, that's why there's so much controversy on these subjects.

It does not matter how many copies of the file there are.

What matters (legally) is how many people consume the visual/audio data (material) contained in those files.

Think of a file as a pointer to material - there can be a million pointers, but just one material ;).

If you look at it in this way, there is no difference to lending your book to someone - your intent is not to lend the paper on which the book is printed, you share the information contained in it (passing the pointer around).