Internet

Re “Cradle to Grave, You’re a Customer First,” Commentary, April 24: The ability of people to manage their own lives in this Brave New World that Jeremy Rifkin is so terrified of is already being supported by new software that allows anyone to masquerade as a fictitious person and to create multiple fictitious identities, thereby nullifying the invasive potential of the Internet technology. These are just the first of many market responses to subvert the commercial interests’ desire to manage us.

Mankind’s ability to survive is well known. We are rarely the helpless fools Rifkin paints. The real horror is the plan by Rifkin’s liberal political friends to save us with another totalitarian bureaucracy. I’ll take the chaos of a free market and rely on my own wits to overcome the customer intimacy that so frightens Rifkin.

DEAN STEPHENS

Culver City