Like most people my age, I grew up on technology. In my case, I started early with a Windows 95 computer, and a paint app.

My parents wanted me to be good with technology, they knew that this was the direction that the world was heading. I would argue they succeeded, perhaps even more than they ever expected.

I hardly could let go of technology. During my preteen years, I recall spending hours playing with the various settings in the control panel of a Windows Millennium PC I had in my basement.

My father would play MS Golf 98 on that machine, since Windows ME still used DOS as the foundation of the OS. I used to play pranks on him changing by changing his virtual character. When he’d load up the game, he’d find that his character was now wearing a pink dress.

I view the technology of my youth through rose tinted glasses. Technology always seemed to made things better. New possibilities were right around the corner. I do not have exactly the same view of technology today.

The Technological Good ¶

There are many, many examples of technology having a positive impact on society. Many people like to point to medical sciences (the invention of the vaccine, or insulin). Even GMOs, while controversial (now), allowed for larger crop yields turning food shortages into surpluses.

When asked, “What does technology mean to you?”, most people will likely mention cell phones, computers, the internet, etc. This is a form of technology, for sure. And these technologies have certainly brought many positive consequences to our lives. It’s difficult to deny. A great example of a positive consequence is one which I am enjoying while writing this phrase. The computer I’m typing on, the website I developed and put on the web for free^[1]. It’s quite unbelievable that all of this is possible and accessible to anyone who has access to the internet.

I used to make electronic music shortly after graduating high-school. I was serious about it. I bought monitor speakers, digital synthesizers, a keyboard, everything I needed to make production-grade music. All I needed was the skill. While this was relatively expensive for a recent high-school graduate, I could afford it after working for a few months. This would never have been possible 20 years ago.

I have a lot to thank technology for. I am a firm believer in it’s positive effects.

A Gold Rush ¶

There was a time where technology was viewed as the saviour of western civilisation. That technology can only be good.

I have to assume that this view came from the early days of industrialisation in North America, where we were relatively sheltered from the negative effects of technology. Negative effects that were painfully obvious in Europe as a result of the two world wars. Here in North America, technology was likely most associated with granting freedom and building wealth.

This view likely came from the following large developments in North America:

• The “freedom”^[2] granted by vehicles, rapid urbanisation meaning larger properties/houses for “everyone”, highways leading to everywhere.
• Inexpensive products that came from the development of plastics, factory lines, and eventually globalisation.
• Mobile technologies such as laptops and cell phones allowing for work to be done almost anywhere.

When put that way, how can technology be anything but freeing?

In the early days of silicon-based technology, the people who were primarily involved with technology were often the people who enjoyed it for its potential to have a positive effect on the world. Even the Internet, originally coined as the World Wide Web (WWW), was developed for a positive social purpose. According to CERN: “The web was originally conceived and developed to meet the demand for automated information-sharing between scientists in universities and institutes around the world.”^[3]

It appears to me that it wasn’t until Bill Gates took Microsoft to its early heights that it became clear that silicon-based technology is for everyone, everywhere. More importantly, that it was a market ready to be exploited. Once that happened, we entered a gold-rush period which lead to periods of heavy development and even sometimes over-saturation (ex: dot-com bubble) in the market.

That gold-rush period introduced people who weren’t necessarily interested in this technology beyond its ability to raise large sums of capital. People who really didn’t care about the intricacies of how the technology works, and at most, just liked the idea of the technology. They love the flash and capital potential that technology brings, but not necessarily the technology itself. The argument I will make today, is that we must be weary of these people- I believe that these people are poisoning the well.

Over-saturation ¶

Prior to a market reaching the saturation point, corporations (and those in charge of them) have much less control over the social impacts of a decision in that specific market. Ethical dilemmas are usually off the table because corporate motivations are better aligned with social motivations. There are more players in the space, and corporations know that they must regulate their behaviour or risk losing their customer-base and/or employees to another company.

"Late-stage capitalism” is a term that I’ve often heard used to describe our current reality. I believe that this term partially refers to the changes in strategies that corporations use to build value for their shareholders. New strategies are needed in order to increase profits, most markets have very little room to be captured anymore. Most companies which have dominated certain markets ten years ago remain as the dominant player in those markets. We have hit and perhaps even surpassed market saturation.

All corporations wish to increase profits, which is fine. It is the “how” that really matters. The attitudes and integrity of those in charge of these corporations have become critical to our societal interests, even more-so than in the past- and it is these attitudes which can be quite concerning.

[The businessmen who proclaim that] business has a “social conscience” and takes seriously its responsibilities for providing employment, eliminating discrimination, avoiding pollution and whatever else may be the catchwords of the contemporary crop of reformers [are] preaching pure and unadulterated socialism. Businessmen who talk this way are unwitting puppets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades. - Milton Friedman, The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits^[4].

These opening words from Friedman’s essay are shocking and ignorant at best. Yet this is the foundation of many corporate attitudes in North America. Its fair to say that this essay would not fly today. Corporations have become aware of their social expectations, often going out of their way to signal that they “[eliminate] discrimination” and “[avoid] pollution”. But these attitudes can still be seen in the actions of many, if not most corporations.

This should not be surprising. We expect “energy”/oil companies to seek profits over public interests, while simultaneously pretending to prioritise these same public interests^[5]. But what is less obvious is that many of our technology companies have wholeheartedly moved in this direction while trying to convince us of exactly the opposite.

What about Technology? ¶

Hold on a second. Technology companies used to be the driver of social improvement, but now they’re like an oil companies? Yeah, in some ways.

They’re not exactly like oil companies. Technology is obviously needed to achieve our shared goals, such as moving away from fossil fuels. Another good example of technological good. But that doesn’t mean that bad things aren’t happening as a result of technology. And more than you might expect.

We have reached a point with cell phones, computers, and internet services where very few things are changing anymore. We have had a few dominant players in the tech space^[6] for a while now, and their ability to innovate to capture more of the market has decreased. This leads to very few options in the strategy of increasing shareholder value. As time goes on, a few alternative strategies are being used, which are generally at odds with societal goals:

1. Reduce costs: Generally this takes the form of paying employees less or laying people off.
2. Anti-consumer practices: Such as anti-repair designs where Apple disables a critical feature if it is not repaired by an “authorized” repair shop^[7], or Toyota killing the bundled remote start feature in favour of a subscription remote start service^[8].
3. Anti-competitive practices: Making decisions which makes competition difficult, such as Apple’s walled gardens, or google with the AMP standard^[9].
4. Anti-competitive mergers: Reducing the competition allowing for an increase of prices for consumers^[10].
5. Invasion of privacy: Such as Microsoft now requiring a Microsoft account to use the Windows 11 operating system, allowing them to collect personal usage data for advertising^[11].

These are all great examples of technology and technology companies moving in the wrong direction, all in the name of increasing shareholder value. This is not like 15 years ago, when technology was a lot more straightforward, and had to benefit the consumer to even justify its existence.

We now have pervasive technologies which have had significant documentation regarding their negative impacts on society. An argument could easily be made against allowing certain of these technologies/companies to exist.

So how are some of these tech companies similar to oil companies? Denial, delay, obfuscation, placation, redirection. The attitudes of their leadership, the attitudes of the people behind the technology.

Poisoning the Well ¶

Facebook (otherwise known as Meta), has been in the news a lot recently. As far as I am concerned, Facebook is a great example of the leadership problems which tends to appear in tech space.

Frances Haugen, a former facebook employee and whistleblower put it best:

“The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was that there were conflicts of interests between what was good for the public, and what was good for Facebook. And Facebook over and over again chose to optimise for its own interests, like making more money.” - Frances Haugen, CBS’s 60 Minutes^[12].

Frances Haugen placed a lot of emphasis on the structure of the company, rather than the individuals who worked there. I am going to go on the record in saying that this structure was likely intentional, either through willfull ignorance and/or formed via indirect incentives. In my experience, the structure of a company is always the consequence of upper management and their attitudes.

“Were not talking about the realm of the possible here, we’re talking about the realm of the profitable. When you talk to Facebook about doing anything that would dent their profits, they create a narrative that it would be impossible.” - Scott Galloway^[13]

I do not mean to pick on Facebook too much here. They are only an example of a systemic leadership problem within this space. This problem exists everywhere, from start-ups to large scale companies. I have had my own experience with horrific leadership in this space, who were primarily motivated by potential for financial gain- at all costs.

It used to be that people would be uncritically exited for new technology or advancements. Those days are over. We need to be critical of who is behind a technology before we judge it to be a positive development.

What About the Good? ¶

Its not all bad news. There remains a few good great examples of tech companies who appear to have great leadership, good practices, and are extremely successful as a result of how they operate.

One such example is Valve, one of the more consumer friendly organisations in the video game space. In return, consumers have rewarded them with incredible profits. They often contribute to open source software projects, and they continue to to innovate on some of the best hardware products of our time. Most notably, the Steam Deck, an incredibly powerful handheld computer for $399. And yeah, their leadership is fantastic. Gabe Newell is famous for having some of the most pro-consumer attitudes, such as “Piracy is a service problem”^[14].

Technology is a tool, just like a hammer. It can be used as a force for societal enrichment, a force to increase shareholder value. Often both, but not always. Fundamentally, it’s the people behind the technology who will decide how that hammer is used, regardless of how amazing the hammer is.