Originally Posted by
Ma'ake
Working in Info Tech and having a BA in Economics from the U, I have a conflicted view of technology.
On the one hand, the Information Revolution put unimaginable amounts of information at everyone's fingertips.
But without any doubt, technology also widens economic inequalities.
This article is slamming US tech giants, but the troubling reality is technology is widening economic inequality... even in the Scandinavian nations. Finland had Nokia, formerly a giant in the cell phone industry. Canada had Blackberry. Both made enormous amounts of money for a few, and both are now long gone, the worker bees in those enterprises displaced and doing something else, now.
In the late 90s I had a short stint at Microsoft, and I was blown away at how much raw brainpower I interacted with, and even more so, how hard those folks worked. It was crystal clear to me that Novell and WordPerfect were going to be demolished, and that's exactly what happened.
One of my colleagues I'll never forget. He taught calculus at Texas A&M, at 19. When I worked with him he was in his late 20s, would get up at 6:00 am, worked until about 8:00pm, went home and studied until about midnight. No kids, wife was also a high end consultant. Legitimate photographic memory. This guy alone was probably more productive than 20-50 Novell engineers... combined, due to his ability to compound his intellect widely, with a drive / stamina that wasn't possible for the family guys at Novell & WordPerfect. It was spooky.
Technology amplifies the value added by extremely smart people, in ways we've never seen before, in Economics. Think about the algorithms that sift through the mountains of information to get a bead on your preferences and place ads conveniently where they're likely to lure you, online. Those algorithms weren't created by thousands of people, yet they produce many $Billions in value. Think teams of 5-10 *extremely* bright people, like my former colleague.
The winners get rich beyond their wildest imaginations, and the losers find something else to do.
The inequalities prompted by technology helped lay the foundation for Trump, without a doubt. And we'll be tempted as a society to push back, as the Luddites tried. Which will only hurt our nation, in the longer run.