Tag: technology

It may be time to react to the Big Tech imperialism of the mind

18.5.26

Dear Partners in Thought,

As it is not healthy to write all the time about Trump and his world destruction , including our old and once essential America (I hope many will see that my pieces in 2025 were sadly right), I thought I should focus on a very clear and additional, if not worse, societal development engineered by Big Tech and many of its leaders. 

When I walk or take a tram in my beautiful Prague, it is hard not to see the legions of people, men and women, often young but also older, watching their phones or carrying them while walking or just being outside. While some are rightfuly looking for needed information, many have fallen easy prey to what has become a tech-engineered addiction close to a deep disease over recent years. Youngsters stay in their rooms while watching never ending video games, initially making their parents happy as they seem contentedly busy. There are so many examples of the human mind being highjacked by internet tools which initially were seen as a sign of a great human progress. Many adults are now following gifted podcasters that flood them with what they really want to hear socially and politically while making huge financial returns. The screens have won the allegiance of too many as they are easier to handle (if never manage) and only require a basic watching and listening ability. While isolation and lack of human communication is now the rising impact globally, the key problem is that today very few people are thinking any more, by which I mean in an old fashioned manner. And AI is not helping, while simultaneously worsening poor human habits and not empowering future careers in a soon-to-be  job-reduced market that some investors will initially find fine – to a short point. At least most schools have now abandonned graded homework for obvious reasons. 

It is clear that many tech addicts, as they grow older, know the problem; but addictions are not easy to manage. There have been healthy reactions recently from country leaderships like in Australia or France to limit the use of some damaging social media by youngsters below the age of 16 or even 15. Other countries like Turkey, Greece or Indonesia have already enacted similar laws while Spain, Austria, Poland, Slovenia, the UK and Malaysia are either about to pass such laws or are considering doing so – thus following Canberra’s lead (while Italy and Germany are introducing parental consent legislations). Schools in Sweden will ban phones, as in many European countries, and – key – will reduce digital learning and reintroduce books in the classroom so students can read (and indeed think). It is good that some countries react, even if similar examples like in the US are naturally not forthcoming (but for a few states that find it challenging, as dealing with the easy historical free speech mantra) given the lobbying weight of Big Tech except for the odd school like one in Florida that was able to see quick positive outcomes of their more controlled acedemic approach.

There may be some deeper rationale (if the word could ever apply) behind this adverse digital societal revolution. Accessing a large number of individuals, young and older, via the new tools provided by the internet (all the more since 2000) is a way to control the minds, also with a political dimension at play. Many in Silicon Valley and especially the Big Tech so-called Bros (names we all know) have been, initially surprisingly, supporting hard right leaders not to say populists or autocrats in the making in America but also in Europe. Being close to and promoting the US president is a useful way to ensure fewer regulations and strong support in dealing with what they perceive as a bureaucratic and financially costly EU. Some populist leaders may not yet see that Big Tech leaders could not care less about any policies or ideological flavour but want to promote their interests first, this seeing the anger-fuelled populist rise as a tactical means to a strategic end. It would not be inconceivable that the main goal of Big Tech would be to eventually rule the world and change democracy as we knew it in the West before the Trump era. It is also clear that such a development is not safe for Big Tech leaders as some have found recently when their main home was attacked or when they do not go out with less than 20 bodyguards, which is also not surprising in the Charlton Heston NRA and weekly mass shooting-friendly and indeed changing America.  

It is always good to review where we are and notice serious societal slippages, even if it is easy to get used to them and do nothing – as we see with the current political era in the US (reassuring no Kings marches put aside). If nothing is done to stop this Big Tech-led societal decline (even if money is the key short-term goal), the roots of a revolutionary backlash of a French 1789 kind, this time of a strong anti-capitalist flavour, might be coming at some point. This scenario might also be enhanced by the expected governing incompetence of electorally-savvy and social media/Big Tech-assisted populists after gaining power at the booth, the latter being their main strength in our days. Hence the need to stress what matters very clearly and trying to go back to the relatively sane world we knew only a few years ago.  

Having said all this, it should be always stressed that technological advancement is and should be good as long as it benefits society. One should not be against “industrial revolutions” as long as they bring human advancement, which is indeed a clear problem today. Big Tech leaders are also not all bad and only mega-billion-focused as shown with the founder of Anthropic and his recent controlled approach to his tools being indiscriminately used by the highly differentiated US Department of “War” under Trump 2.0.  There is still hope in the making but we should ensure passivity does not win the day as we see too often in our societies today.    

Warmest regards,

Serge

“Billionaire Backlash” (Pepper Culpepper and Taeku Lee)

11.3.26

Dear Partners in Thought,

As we are flooded with news about the highly questionable Iran war and its many impacts, I thought that it would be healthy to give us a break and focus on something else, even if not always endearing. We live in times when values-flexible Big Tech mega-billionaires are changing our societies while increasing their huge wealth to unprecedented levels and supporting the likes of President Trump to secure a less-regulated environment for their business. This era made me want to read “Backlash Billionaires – The age of corporate scandal and how it could save democracy”, a great book that covers many business scandals over the ages while reviewing their impact on society. This book was written by two academics who have known each other for some years: Pepper Culpepper, who teaches government and public policy at Oxford’s Nuffield College and is a Vice-Dean of the Blavatnik School of Government and Taeku Lee, who is the Bae Professor and Faculty Dean of Dunster House at Harvard and former President of the American Political Science Association. In a differentiated flavour, they make the point that they are “an academic odd couple, prone to disagree on matters both trivial and significant” while, as I read, showing excellence in their joint findings. On a personal note, I once met the great Pepper in Prague as he was visiting my close friend Trev, who is the man dealing with all tech issues of this blog while ensuring all commas are where they should be (On a personal note, I am neither a techie nor a billionaire).      

As an introduction, the book goes back to the early 20th century and the first well-known corporate scandal dealing with the unhealthy dealings of the meat industry leading to a book that led to steep declines in meat sales and then drastic regulations for the “Beef Trust” (setting the stage for the US Food and Drug Administration, even if Upton Sinclair,  the then early socialist author was focused on the poor working conditions of the sector and not its products). We then read about names we almost forgot like Nelson Rockefeller (the first world billionaire in 1916, richer than Elon Musk today), Cornelius Vanderbilt, Leland Stanford (now we know the origin of the great university) and J.P. Morgan and their business empires while we discover the high level of corruption among American elected officials, who became wealthy by protecting them at a time when mainstream news media in their infancies were not providing any guardrails. Those few who exposed the business titans’ bad practices, likely at great risks for their lives and careers, were then known as the “muckrackers” and eventually led to political change. The authors stressed that they were the ones who helped save democracy in the early days. We then go into many corporate scandals in the 20th century and later that, while being quite bad for the markets and its consumers, led to healthy reactions that helped change things for the better.      

Activists matter when changes are badly needed and so are scandals to motivate them. The authors stress the impact of a few individuals, like a forgotten Ralph Nader, who in his 1960s campaigned so carmakers would finally introduce seat belts. They rightly point to the impact today of the digital revolution on business and political power while stressing the huge profits of the mega-banks, the lack of appetite of the oil industry for net zero and the domination of tech companies in our daily lives – all while governments seem unable to always correct any adverse societal developments (note that the EU is known to be keen on regulating Big Tech even if one could argue as it is also American). 

Without going into too many details so the book can be fully enjoyed, the authors bring us many examples of corporate scandals that led to change at many levels while others did not lead to much. While starting with the well-known Enron and WorldCom scandals, the latter many of us have forgotten but the former that was probably the most publicised scandal of the 21st century, also leading to the demise of then leading Big6 accounting firm Arthur Andersen in 2002, “Billionaire Backlash” offers very detailed accounts of  top corporate scandals involving Goldman Sachs pre-2008 financial crisis, Facebook and its users’ privacy, Cambridge Analytica (the then-famous Oxford Analytica may have disliked), Exxon, Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto FTX and Samsung among other incredible stories. Future likely scandals and reactions to them may be linked to Big Tech and now Artificial Intelligence and its adverse impacts on junior jobs and society, at large (starting with schoolwork at home or mere job applications) also heavily tainted by the amazing personalities involved and their eagerness to amass centi-billions. 

The authors finally stress that governments, that are de facto controlled by interest groups, also via their lobbyists, are now unable to deliver, this leading to current extremist populism and easy solutions to complex issues that now resonate well within the electorates of democracies. However, they stress that corporate scandals reveal an undervalued resource via latent opinion for good politics. They then offer an interesting and unusual approach to dealing with corporate greed and its societal harm by way of “Good Populism” which is almost funny at a time when populism is also known as a tool for largely incompetent extremist parties, usually of the hard right kind, to win elections regardless of what would really happen afterwards. However, the additional “Good” says clearly what they really mean and they broadly see as “a programme that makes politics more responsive without undermining the capacity of government to deliver on the things that are vital” while “attacking issues associated with corporate domination of democracy so as to respond to the populist impulses of today”. The innovative case they make, which is not an easy one, is worth thinking about.  “Billionaire Backlash” is a great book, requiring some focus given its many details reflecting the strong academic credentials of its authors. It stresses both key historical facts and potential plans for a better future in making sure corporate greed is fully controlled while consumer and indeed citizen needs are nicely met. A very fine book especially in our times of society-harming centi-billionaire Big Tech bros when Upton Sinclair would find a great opportunity to both leading needed regulations in a key sector for sound societal development and hopefully improving our naturally imperfect economic system. 

Warmest regards,

Serge