Excerpt from the chapter: “A New World War”
But it’s time to stop being willfully blind. With Big Tech’s wealth and power has come tremendous arrogance. There is a sense that society should be reshaped in its image – that we should all be prepared to move faster, work harder, and disrupt anything and everything. But the truth is that Big Tech answers to us – the people. The United States is in danger of becoming an oligopoly run by the wealthiness and most connected, and all to often we feel powerless to change the rules by which companies operate. We need to shake off that feeling of impotence and understand that we can make the rules of the digital economy and society what we want and need them to be. What’s more the stakes are too high for us not to do that…
Big Tech’s size and scale and speed have made it difficult to track and control. But we are beginning to understand exactly what we’ve given up to get all the bright and shiny new things that we have. No new technology remains unchanged, or keeps its hold over the public forever. The railroads once appeared to be an unstoppable force, until wise public officials put them in service to the broader economy rather than merely the robber barons who founded them…
