Talkin' ‘bout Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon.
Been doing a little research on these entities and, well, they're big. They're building campuses. They're hiring a lot of talent. They're building new headquarters. Some of the places where they are building locals are being priced out, but in the name of 'progress', so what? There is a lot of money behind what they are up to. They have scary amounts of cash with which to finance their endeavors.
They are deeply embedded and highly positioned already in a lot of the things we do and seek to further their presence. Many competitors to The Five are faced with having to in some way use their services and are paying The Frightful Five a percentage in order to do business. Antitrust laws written in times past simply may not apply to some of what is taking place now.
The Five are building their company's infrastructures so that they can rebuild the entire country’s infrastructure. They're into the ways we drive, shop, interact, communicate, store and share data; they're into mapping, A.I., entertainment, shipping, advertising, and shaping our view of the world. They're huge concentrations of power and with that always comes political power. They just might be bigger than the government in some ways, as far as calling the shots.
A little less of that….
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Which might call for the 'R' word- regulation- because when things got overly concentrated in the past- in railroads, oil, telephone networks, and airlines- to name a few- Uncle Sam stepped in and leveled the playing field somewhat but now? Things are moving awfully fast. Spinoffs and subsidiary enterprises of The Five are multiplying.
If I was at the helm of one of these giants, with a virtual army under my command, I would be highly appraised of what my troops were up to, what our strategic goals were, and what our goals would be once our immediate objectives were reached because my army would have to continue to be fed! I read just last night that Amazon employs 500,000 people, and if that doesn't qualify as an army.......
I also know that Google is building an office complex that will employ 20,000 and there was a picture of Apple's circular Cupertino, California campus that looked like some sort of otherworldly ring as viewed from an airplane and you have to wonder "What are they doing in there?" because that is like an alien beehive or something. Bees get busy in places like that!
The cash flow that these companies enjoy enables them to finance all sorts of research and development, so much so that it's almost comical. If the ol' Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz looked distant and foreboding in a way so do these quasi empires to me and if I were inside one of these campuses the amount of incomprehensible geek talk going on would be completely over my head while the smug smirks of the techies would indicate that I was one of the outsiders, one of the rubes that is being taken for a ride. I am one of their marks, one of their targets, a clueless ordinary citizen as easily taken advantage of as a child. In other words, a sitting duck.
Yikes!
…‘n more of this, please.
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They of course, all the while, quite routinely and without clearly asking, have been compiling data on me left and right and using that data to shape and mold me unawares, but in their corporate view this has been 'for the greater good' because they are now the determiners of fate, my fate, your fate, and act as the hidden hands that steer the world. Is this not James Bond's Number 1 that we are witnessing here, but instead of a singular Number 1, there be now five?
Who is there to reign these entities in for they are running pell mell towards profit and growth and letting nothing stand in their way save their own steering currents, the members of their boards, their company's ethics, the leadership of their CEO's, and the social consciousnesses of their employees, who, like the engineers of Area 51, might be working on projects, compartmentalized, so that they don't individually know the ultimate uses of the technologies they are developing?
Does this not lead to paranoia? Yes! We've already seen that Facebook can be used to sway opinions, and that people on You Tube can produce videos professing that the earth is flat and actually gain some traction with that. We've seen that apps on phones can track personal movements in minute detail, that The Cloud can store some of your personal data- forever- you being unable to delete it, that tech workers can be employed on mysterious contracts financed by the Defense Department, and that algorithms are being feverishly developed to predict every aspect of your behavior, so that- what? You can simply be sold things? Tip of the iceberg, methinks.
Facial recognition, military robots, drones, surveillance networks! Enough money to redesign parts of existing cities, or develop new tracts of land! Self driving cars and trucks being introduced with the ultimate aim of taking over and controlling the transportation network that we now autonomously use- all of these things and more lie in our future.
So far, these tech giant's influence on the citizenry has mainly been a boon, one that has greatly improved our quality of life. But I am wary, for I have seen corruption take over enterprises before. People can get woozy and suffer lack of astute judgement from breathing the rarified air in ivory towers.
As 2019 dawns, brothers and sisters, let our shared resolution, our (to use a tech term here) ‘Call To Action’ be that these tech behemoths only have the best of intentions, 'cuz in the face of this kind of momentum, global willpower might be the only thing ordinary citizens have left.