I had been disturbed by the actions of platforms like Google for awhile, fearing that their naive efforts at maintaining "mass market appeal" in the most hamfis

I had been disturbed by the actions of platforms like Google for awhile, fearing that their naive efforts at maintaining "mass market appeal" in the most hamfisted and blind ways possible were going to have unintentional consequences for global human culture. Then I read Eric Schmidt's book 'The New Digital Age.' They are not naive. And the effects are not unintentional at all. Their goal isn't even mass-market appeal. They want to ossify human culture and lock it in place to what it was in the early 2000s when they first became successful. As multitudes in the past have done, upon attaining influence many in the tech crowd have concluded that they know better, and that the general public (of which they of course never count themselves a member) is not capable of the task of regulating their own culture. This is a pretty old viewpoint. It built the pyramids, united Rome, etc. It's old school Conservative thinking, where the needs of the nation (or cult or tribe or whatever) come first, and the individual exists solely to serve that. It requires the presence of 'special' people, typically incarnated gods, representatives chosen by a god, or somehow otherwise fundamentally 'Better' people, like a kings lineage. That brand of thinking ruled the world for a long time, but it got its ass kicked basically completely around the end of the 18th century. I have no idea why the rich people at the top of tech companies seem to like it so much. But it's becoming increasingly clear that these systems of communication are enabling a greater level of control and there are some sick-minded powerful folks who will need to be reigned in as they are more than willing to take those reigns. No one should have those. Global culture can, and eventually will, guide itself. Humanity is a wonderful species, but only in its totality. In the cut-down whitewashed conformal mass that Facebook and Google and others want to construct and sell to people, then try to force on the rest, it looks more like a metastatic infection. The tech companies are unquestionably at war with basic human nature. They do not like humans very much, and they want to change them. Like their forebearers in the Industrial Revolution, they seek to round off the rough edges, smooth out the wrinkles, and will wreak any amount of suffering necessary to do so. Engineers need to think very hard about the ethics of their work. "Just doing my job" holds exactly as much moral weight as "I just did it for money", so keep that in mind. It's an empty dodge.