Big Tech: Waymo… and Too Little
Take Big Tech, please. These new masters of the universe promised to bring us a brave new world. Well, it's new alright, but since the rise of the tech industry, the quality of life in America and around the planet has only declined. Here in San Francisco, where Mayor London Breed invites all sorts of tech disruption, the latest Silicon Valley invasion is the wave of Waymo robot cars that has now taken over our streets. For now, the autonomous vehicles are under the dual command of human drivers. But after the testing period is finished, the self-driving machines will displace thousands of flesh-and-blood drivers, with Waymo promising better safety records. Just in time, as gig drivers unionize and win court cases. Progress... or more dystopia for San Francisco and other cities colonized by Big Tech?
Meanwhile, whitey is on the moon... or rather tech billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are blasting off to outer space, as Earth becomes increasingly uninhabitable. (Except for those amazing self-driving cars!)
Big Tech is simply the highest level of a capitalist system that is running more and more amok. We desperately need the best minds in the world to be working on ways to mitigate climate calamities and viral scourges. Instead, the best and brightest are working on AI systems to replace Uber drivers.
If quick and big profits weren't the only driving force in Silicon Valley, our smartest engineers would be developing collection systems and long pipelines to deliver water from drenched Eastern states to drought and wildfire-ravaged Western states. Now THAT would be a major technological advance!
But instead we see tech billionaires behaving badly, like nerdy boys suddenly awash in far too much cash. They run off with bimbos half their age and get entangled in messy, expensive divorces. They build rocket ships and other lavish toys. They crush unions and turn their human workers into automatons.
Like the other fundamentals of life -- food, housing, medical care, education, and energy -- Big Tech is too essential and too powerful to be left in the hands of a few very lucky boy-men. The public needs to take over the tech industry, so the best minds are put to work on life and death urgencies -- instead of flooding our streets with more robot cars and our galaxy with vanity-plated spaceships.
