Reply To: “Big Tech”: Too much power?

akuperma,

“This should be put in historic context. Ask where the current all-powerful evil corporations were 50 years ago?”

Your assertion seems to be that evil corporations are eventually checked in their excesses by customers voting with their feet. I would contend, however, that the downfall of these “evil” companies is more associated with the rise of new technologies that disrupt the market. The big companies that have everything invested in the infrastructure to make the now obsolete product, like the Titanic, cannot change course as fast as upstart companies building new infrastructure, and thus fall from dominance. The challenge here is that these six companies are developing technology with capabilities we do not fully understand due to withheld information, using this technology in ways we do not see, and they have taken control of the flow of information itself. Therefore, they have created an infrastructure that is required to create new infrastructures. I’d contend that their level of control over humanity is historically unprecedented.