.png)
''' '' TECH SUPERPOWERS
TEEN '' ''' : !WOW!
JUST RECENTLY : THE PRAGMATISTS AND IDEALISTS clashed at Facebook. How to maintain civility while still growing.
To the initiated 'The Universe's Best Hope and Bet' against the superpowers of Big Tech is The World Students Society - for every subject in the world - most respectfully lovingly called !WOW! in every corner of the planet.
THE STUDENTS OF THE WORLD will soon get to see almost everything in technology. But even now they believe that the power of !WOW! is like nothing they've ever seen before.
With Almighty God's blessings, The Founder Framers will very soon be publishing the glorious names of the likely candidates for ''International Committee''. For it is they who would all be debating, agreeing, disagreeing, protesting, consenting, inspiring, guiding, to see you all through to building a better world for the generations to come.
Steve Lohr, too knows everything there is to know about technology. Steve Lohr's more than 20 years of writing about the tech for The New York Times includes covering the U.S. government's antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, which started in 1998 and ended with a settlement in 2002.
Steve spoke with me about the case and multiple government antitrust lawsuits filed in recent months against Facebook and Google, including a fresh Google antitrust case filed last week. He said that 1990's Microsoft didn't have nearly the influence of today's tech superpowers.
1.- What's similar about the Google and Facebook antitrust cases and The Microsoft one?
Many of the legal and business issues are similar. There's a notion that proving Google and Facebook hurt consumers will be tough because harm has mainly been defined as raising prices, and those companies' products are mostly free.
But prices weren't really part of the Microsoft case, either. Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser was free, bundled into Windows. The government said that Microsoft did that to defend the monopoly from the threat posed by the Internet.
Another anxiety now about Big Tech is their gatekeeper role - that they have the power to influence which business or industries thrive or die.
It was exactly the same way with Microsoft, Banks, news organizations and carmakers were worried that Microsoft would monopolize the web and become a tollbooth between them and their customers.
2.- Those fears were wrong that Microsoft would dominate the web, but they were right that the Internet upended entire industries.
Most mid-1990s predictions about the Internet came true - just a decade or more later and with a twist.
3.- What feels different about the Google and Facebook antitrust cases?
Today's technology powers touch far more sectors of life than Microsoft ever did. The Microsoft antitrust case was fairly narrowly focused on commercial and market power. Questions about Big Tech now have a bigger canvas than antitrust.
It's also about misinformation, their ability to shape public opinion, data hoarding and how the downsides of that should be restrained by the government, if at all.
4.- What impact did that case have on Microsoft and on technology?
It's impossible to know, but I think Microsoft was chastened by the antitrust case and that may have created room for Google and other tech companies to thrive. But technology has also changed faster than Microsoft did.
5.- Will that happen with what feels like these unbeatable Big Tech companies?
Never say never. Nut the network effects and lock-ins of today's tech powers are on a scale that we haven't seen before in their areas of technology. It's reasonable to ask whether government interventions might be needed to level the playing field.
6.- What are overlooked changes that have emerged from technology?
The technology that's seeping into every industry has the capacity to do what the manufacturing sector once did.
Help lift more people into middle class.
A negative change is a tendency to trust technology too much. A doctor recently told me that diagnostic software in medicine is useful but also risky if we rely on it without thinking.
The ultimate Hollywood example of dystopian tech is ''Wall E'' technology making everything so easy that we lose our personal agency.
7. A SMOKING GUN FOR GOOGLE?
The states are saying that Google and Facebook colluded to help their own businesses at the expense of everyone else's.
Many of the allegations so far in the lawsuits against Google and Facebook are not the kind of courtroom reveals in ''Law & Order'' that make jurors gasp and weep. And that's fine. Proving an antitrust case doesn't require surprises.
But this Facebook detail is the stuff of legal thrillers. Well, a certain kind of legal thrillers. The big deal here is that being a monopoly is not against the law in the United States. What is against the law is getting that way by cheating and hurting everyone else in the process. A collusion with one of Google's biggest competitors would be cheating.
The Honour and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on Big Tech and Powers, continues. The World Students Society thanks author Shira Ovide.
With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all prepare and register for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society :
wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :
''' Tech - Team '''
Good Night and God Bless
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Grace A Comment!