Until recently the two greatest and most financial monopolies in history were the Dutch and British East India Companies but their power and wealth were amassed over a period of a hundred or more years not in about a generation as has happened here with Big Tech.
Twenty or so years ago after the Dot-com bubble had burst, opportunistic techies and investors caught everyone off guard by finding ways of not only turning the Internet's debris and discarded detritus into the fastest and largest moneymaking concerns in all of human history but they also managed to monopolize the web to the point where they now essentially control and or influence just about every type of online activity. Nowadays, Big Tech effectively owns the internet.
What they did was unprecedented, they hijacked control of the internet by manipulating its users through psychological means that would have even shocked the likes of Edward Bernays and David Ogilvy, those masters of propaganda and advertising would not have thought such a degree of control at all feasible.
We now have well over five billion people on Social Media (>63% of the world's population) and Google dominates search with just on 90% of the market share with some 5 trillion search results per year—all of which they've achieved in just 20 or so years. These are unrivalled and staggering—in fact terrifying—statistics! Not even that evil but brilliant propagandist Goebbels—who is often touted as the greatest manipulator in history—would ever have dreamed such a huge turnaround would have been possible in such a short time. In a speech to the party faithful on 9 January 1928 he discusses the nature of propaganda and how to bring about change in the worldview of a population with carefully crafted ideas so as to manipulate their minds into believing the propagandist's message but he never extended that to the notion of making 'convenience' so indispensable to the point where addiction takes hold and reason is abandoned. Like a ratchet on a cog, once Big Tech entraps users they find escape or turning back impossible. (In the light of events of recent years, it's well worth reading that speech.)
It truly beats me how you can say "it's all about continuous improvements". In my view Big Tech's unregulated manipulation of human minds on such a monumental scale is one of the most disastrous events in human history.
The strategies that those behind Big Tech concocted were no doubt truly brilliant—so brilliant that even regulators and governments were blinded to both their negative effects on users and to the inevitable monopolies that would form. Their own addiction parasitized their minds against seeing what were blatantly obvious dangers at the outset. For 20 years they thus took no regulatory action.
> addiction... on monumental scale... no doubt truly brilliant... nigh on impossible.
What if you've made a fundamental mistake or two in your otherwise astute analysis? That would be innocent by itself but jumping to grand generalizations may not be.
Well, I'm just citing sociologists and researchers who point to the overwhelming evidence. That said, one has to be a mushroom or blind not to have noticed the fact.
Besides, no one likes to be told home truths, it's why shooting the messenger is such a common activity.
> Well, I'm just citing sociologists and researchers
"Sociologists and researchers" are well aware on which side their bread is buttered. Or do you think they are less aware than you about being under continuous surveillance?
Then everybody there ends up in the chorus of half truths and you end up sucked in their wake.
Until recently the two greatest and most financial monopolies in history were the Dutch and British East India Companies but their power and wealth were amassed over a period of a hundred or more years not in about a generation as has happened here with Big Tech.
Twenty or so years ago after the Dot-com bubble had burst, opportunistic techies and investors caught everyone off guard by finding ways of not only turning the Internet's debris and discarded detritus into the fastest and largest moneymaking concerns in all of human history but they also managed to monopolize the web to the point where they now essentially control and or influence just about every type of online activity. Nowadays, Big Tech effectively owns the internet.
What they did was unprecedented, they hijacked control of the internet by manipulating its users through psychological means that would have even shocked the likes of Edward Bernays and David Ogilvy, those masters of propaganda and advertising would not have thought such a degree of control at all feasible.
We now have well over five billion people on Social Media (>63% of the world's population) and Google dominates search with just on 90% of the market share with some 5 trillion search results per year—all of which they've achieved in just 20 or so years. These are unrivalled and staggering—in fact terrifying—statistics! Not even that evil but brilliant propagandist Goebbels—who is often touted as the greatest manipulator in history—would ever have dreamed such a huge turnaround would have been possible in such a short time. In a speech to the party faithful on 9 January 1928 he discusses the nature of propaganda and how to bring about change in the worldview of a population with carefully crafted ideas so as to manipulate their minds into believing the propagandist's message but he never extended that to the notion of making 'convenience' so indispensable to the point where addiction takes hold and reason is abandoned. Like a ratchet on a cog, once Big Tech entraps users they find escape or turning back impossible. (In the light of events of recent years, it's well worth reading that speech.)
It truly beats me how you can say "it's all about continuous improvements". In my view Big Tech's unregulated manipulation of human minds on such a monumental scale is one of the most disastrous events in human history.
The strategies that those behind Big Tech concocted were no doubt truly brilliant—so brilliant that even regulators and governments were blinded to both their negative effects on users and to the inevitable monopolies that would form. Their own addiction parasitized their minds against seeing what were blatantly obvious dangers at the outset. For 20 years they thus took no regulatory action.
Reversing the problem is now nigh on impossible.