HI Bryan,
Thanks for your comments. I was hoping people would fill in the details themselves and come to their own conclusions.
Most of us know what’s going on, but just say well that’s the way of the present and look at all the new technology. But along with useful new technologies there is the current reality of concentration of power into something not democratic, unethical and not equitable.
The concentration of power and money in Silicon Valley assholes and in the US that leaves little for normal people and for the businesses that actually provide physical services. That power is often monopolistic and is taking advantage of people.
People in the US (I’m from the US) are raised in a hyper-competitive survivalist environment along with hyper-capitalism and that isn’t the norm in other developed nations. That’s resulted in the current US domination over other countries.
I think the best solution is for people to fight back in peaceful manner and to resist.
We need a new political party to take over which understands technology and advocates for a balanced, safe and healthy life, and corporate reform, to tackle American hyper-consumerism, materialism, the work-focussed lifestyle and hyper-capitalism.
I think that the problem is that about 11% of the US population are from millionaire households and they’ve crated this sick system for their own benefit, taking advantage of the rest of the population simply for their own twisted financial interests.
Business and government of course have totally different functions. What I was referring to was the ability of government to understand what Silicon Valley is up and to react to it in time to make an actual difference. There are some historical examples, such as the old Microsoft case in the US and more recent ones in Western Europe, where by the time government tried to punish tech’s monopolistic or otherwise unethical behavior it was much too late. In all cases government actions were much too small to make any difference because by that time they were already fighting giants, and in many cases people were already moving on to new technologies anyway.
Good examples of past technology which government failed to protect us from are that creepy tech surveillance of all of humanity and the associated advertising technology which is able to manipulate minds. Propaganda powered by machine cognition and espionage, which most famously likely allowed the Russia’s dictator to cause both the UK to leave the EU and the election of Trump.
So imagine future technologies such as real AI (real AI doesn’t currently exist) and driverless cars. AI could be a utopia where humans don’t have to work very much or at all, and everyone on earth could be provided for. But instead it looks like it could be a hell where a few tech assholes will control most power and money and we could be poorer. With driverless cars, that could be a completely regulated industry with zero pollution, almost no traffic and highly taxed so that people will pay for the massive damage to society caused by vehicles instead of freeloading like now. Instead we have companies building closed systems. Yet those things like driverless car maps save lives and need to be collaborative and not owned by one company. Now do you really think our pants pooping corrupt government will even understand any of this yet alone do anything? Especially with tech assholes paying for their elections.