Sorry about that,I thought that it would start at 48:42.And if you want to read it,go to www.wired.com and in their search box type "visible technologies .     

aiia:

Has not the "line" between corporations and government long been washed away as the  sand castles by the surf. give serious consideration to how many decades is it  that American has been "this nation of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations...". That nation "...of the people..." of  which Abrahan Lincoln spoke so eloquently 7 score and 6 years ago at Gettysburg.   It is with some degree of certainty that Lincoln was prescient even then to realize the danger the nation faced with the growing power of corporations. For it was only one year later, November 21, 1864, that Lincoln wrote to Col. William F. Elkins"

"We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end.
It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood. . . .
It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes
me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war,
corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places
will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong
its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth
is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.
I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety
of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war.
God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless."

The 'final nail in the coffin' was hammered in by the U.S. bought and paid for SCOTUS  in Santa Clara County v Southern Pacifica Railroad Company

This is the text of the 1886 Supreme Court decision granting corporations the same rights as living persons under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Quoting from David Korten's The Post-Corporate World, Life After Capitalism (pp.185-6):

          In 1886, . . . in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that a private corporation is a person and entitled to the legal rights and protections the Constitutions affords to any person. Because the Constitution makes no mention of corporations, it is a fairly clear case of the Court's taking it upon itself to rewrite the Constitution.

          Far more remarkable, however, is that the doctrine of corporate personhood, which subsequently became a cornerstone of corporate law, was introduced into this 1886 decision without argument. According to the official case record, Supreme Court Justice Morrison Remick Waite simply pronounced before the beginning of arguement in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company that

          The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does.

          The court reporter duly entered into the summary record of the Court's findings that

          The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteen Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

          Thus it was that a two-sentence assertion by a single judge elevated corporations to the status of persons under the law, prepared the way for the rise of global corporate rule, and thereby changed the course of history.
          The doctrine of corporate personhood creates an interesting legal contradiction. The corporation is owned by its shareholders and is therefore their property. If it is also a legal person, then it is a person owned by others and thus exists in a condition of slavery -- a status explicitly forbidden by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. So is a corporation a person illegally held in servitude by its shareholders? Or is it a person who enjoys the rights of personhood that take precedence over the presumed ownership rights of its shareholders? So far as I have been able to determine, this contradiction has not been directly addressed by the courts.

The Fourteen Amendment had absolutely nothing to do with corporate personhood but was enacted along with many other issues to give former slaves citizenship. no where in the text of the 14th Amendment is the term corporations used.

The most powerful corporations of the period included the Railroads. If not the most powerful at the time the railroads very nearly so. SCOTUS imember(s) in 1886  came from railroad background.

For more history concerning railroads see, Dee Alexander' s Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow.