We live our lives increasingly surrounded by technology. This is not just for communication. Algorithms now write news and sports stories, decide whose job request resumes get accepted or rejected , allow us to turn our house lights on or off from a distance, register our exercise patterns, soon will drive us and our goods, and so much more.
And it’s all gathered and controlled by a few giant multinational tech companies.
Franklin Foer says its becoming a threat to our humanity we should be concerned. He is a journalist and author of “World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech.”
ListenWhile providing us with convenience, these few companies are surreptitiously taking control of our lives
They’re taking control of our privacy and of contemplation, introspection and autonomous thought.
Foer says the corporate ambitions of multinational giants like google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon for example are seeking and getting control over things like privacy, intellectual property, while having the ability to influence society in directions they might choose.
They are monopolists who simply absorb any and all potential competition while seeking access to our identities as individuals and influencing our decision making.
While tracing the origins of computer science from Descartes and the enlightenment to the rise of these supranational giant corporations.
Foer says few people have grasped the sheer scale of the threat to us as individuals and on a societal level. He explains not just the looming existential crisis but the imperative of resistance.
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