Unfollow the Money
At this point, it’s probably hard to believe that many of us working on and investing in the early internet actually saw its emergence as a world positive development. We were convinced that the tools would change things for the better. The internet would open a universe of diverse ideas, and we’d no longer be separated by parks or walls or oceans. And the unbridled sharing of information would shed light on evildoers. It was about to be the worst time in history to be a despot or a genocidal maniac because the whole world would be watching. (Insert record player screeching noise here). While it’s undeniably true that the internet has added plenty of positives to our lives (you’re reading one right now!), the negatives have taken center stage; including the mass mis- and disinformation that make clear thinking and reasonable political discourse almost impossible and the concentration of almost unimaginable wealth among an increasingly powerful few. Joe Biden issued a warning about the role of wealth in politics in his farewell address: “I want to warn the country of some things that give me great concern. And this is a dangerous concern. And that’s the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people. Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.” (If you squinted hard enough during Biden’s address, you could almost make out Elon Musk in the background measuring for new drapes.) David Remnick in The New Yorker:
In his farewell address, a weary President Biden issues an essential warning.
+ Of course, much of the wealth in this emerging oligarchy is being amassed by people running big tech companies, the same ones that have helped make the products that, as Biden said, are burying Americans “under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation, enabling the abuse of power … The free press is crumbling. Editors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on factchecking. Truth is smothered by lies, told for power and for profit.” (And to think most of us just came here for the cute cat videos…)
+ Charlie Warzel in The Atlantic (Gift Article) on experiencing the LA fires during our age of social media and some hopeful signs that we can move Beyond Doomscrolling. “To watch the destruction in Los Angeles through the prism of our fractured social-media ecosystem is to feel acutely disoriented. The country is burning; your friends are going on vacation; next week Donald Trump will be president; the government is setting the fires to stage a ‘land grab’; a new cannabis-infused drink will help you ‘crush’ Dry January. Mutual-aid posts stand alongside those from climate denialists and doomers. Stay online long enough and it’s easy to get a sense that the world is simultaneously ending and somehow indifferent to that fact. It all feels ridiculous.”
+ NYT (Gift Article): A Euphoric Tech Industry Is Ready to Celebrate Trump and Itself.
+ Sometimes the concentration of wealth story and the misinformation story merge into one, with a heavy dose of irony. The very oligarchy that Biden warns of (and the one that spent so feverishly to oust his party from power) did remarkably well during his tenure. Bloomberg (Gift Article): American ‘Oligarchy’ Decried by Biden Gained $1.5 Trillion in His Term. If you’re sick and tired of hearing about the story of oligarchs dominating our planet, here’s one about them dominating space. “Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s space company has blasted its first rocket into orbit in a bid to challenge the dominance of Elon Musk’s SpaceX.”
