|
I think we agree like 80% of the way, but that our disagreement is that I believe a political action is necessary to bring about the culture shift we're discussing, whereas you seem to believe that consumers can demand it in the marketplace. But I do agree that this movement is a nascent potential that seems to be developing and that it may well be realized. I think there's an widely held conception, which comes from orthodox economics, that consumers demand something and then businesses respond to give them what they want. But I think that's wrong in a subtle but important way; it neglects the ability of business interests to shape what consumers demand. For instance, I believe Facebook's pivot to Meta was precipitated by Apple's privacy update which limited FB's ability to conduct surveillance on iPhone. Presumably they feel it's an existential liability to rely on their competitor's platforms, because should a privacy-focused arms race break out between Apple and Google, it could destroy FB's ability to monetize their service. So they looked at the resources at their disposal, came up with a path forward which would result in the outcome they desired, and set about trying to convince the public they wanted a metaverse. This is a particularly ham-fisted effort, which makes it a good illustration, but I believe this is a more subtle element of many products. The key element here is that Facebook decided what product would best serve their interests, and tried to synthesize a demand, rather than responding to an organic demand for a metaverse. This is why I don't think it's sufficient for consumers to simply change their behavior. Consumers cannot put options on the table; they can only express interests and hope they are fulfilled. Additionally business interests can collude much more easily than consumers, as there are fewer of them and their interests are better aligned. Consumers can demand nonhostile products, but at best they'll get differently-hostile products which address some of their concerns while innovating bold new ways to undermine the consumer. Something like, we've stopped shipping DRM with games because we know you don't like it, but we've also moved to a games-as-a-service model where you can't play without connecting to our servers, so we've actually ended up with even more control over your ability to play. It's sort of like a chess game where black has two rows of pawns. The only winning move is to change what game you're playing. > Then we should use a less general word than "technology". When it comes to language, I'm a descriptivist. I neither agree nor disagree that this is a bad word choice, my only claim is about what people mean. A framing you may appreciate more is, swapping "technology" for "the social institution of technology" (I think "Big Tech" isn't quite right to swap in, as it excludes, say, technology used by the government or intelligence agencies) is the steel man of the argument, and we ought to consider the merits of the stronger version of the argument and avoid arguing about the semantics of words. |