Some snippets of the introduction: > When will tech solve the real problems, critics ask? > Assuming that this complaint is sincere, it nonetheless misses the

Some snippets of the introduction: > When will tech solve the real problems, critics ask? > Assuming that this complaint is sincere, it nonetheless misses the point. What are "real" problems? > [...] the author wants to deputize Google, Facebook, Apple, and other tech companies to solve social problems. To rectify flawed systems. > Do we really want tech companies to turn their attention away from beating board game players and producing business products to start 'solving' social problems? The answer to this question should be an emphatic "no." The entire framing of the question is profoundly backward. The closest you'll get to a tl;dr are the author's two paragraphs summing things up: > This essay advances the following points: > 1. The clamoring for tech companies to solve social problems ignores the empirical record and empirically observed characteristics of top-down engineering efforts and is rooted in a naive belief in the power of technical rationality. Technical rationality not only has a long and fairly checkered history when applied to social problems, but also takes on pathological characteristics when it is embodied in bureaucratic organizations attempting to engineer their way out of policy problems. There is no concrete idea of how tech companies are going to work on these problems, just a vague belief that they should rooted in worship of technical rationality. > 2. Tech companies are neither instrinsically [sic] well-adapted for taking on quasi-governmental or governmental functions nor likely to be any more successful at escaping the problems of technical rationality than their government counterparts have been. While tech companies can make valuable policy contributions in certain functional areas and with certain mechanisms, the biggest benefit they provide is simply giving us more tools to solve our own problems. Why should we depend on tech companies to solve social problems when it is both better from a normative perspective and a practical one for them to simply give us the tools we need to empower ourselves?