This article deeply disappoints me as Hacker news is the last place that I would expect to find Luddites. > They promised the open web, we got walled gardens

This article deeply disappoints me as Hacker news is the last place that I would expect to find Luddites. > They promised the open web, we got walled gardens Google doesn't give out its users data in the same way that a bank doesn't give out it's users balances. > ...many of the dystopian business practices we associate with fast-growing tech platforms [like] operating with a small group of well-paid engineers, surrounded by contractors The implication here is that before Amazon, no company applied aggressive and unethical cost saving measures. When was Nestle founded again? > Uber did not cause this precarious economy. It is the waste product of the service economy This is the kind of thing that makes you sound smart but means nothing. There is not an explanation of the "waste product of the service economy" that follows this quote. In fact this implies it is not Uber's fault at all for disrupting the taxi industry. > In the case of venture capitalists, [...] their real genius appears to lie in their timing: their ability to enter a sector late, after the highest development risks had already been taken, but at an optimum moment to make a killing The implication being that nobody made a competitor company before the internet was around. The other claim is that being n+1 to the market gives you a guaranteed and significant advantage. If this was the case it would be trivial to overtake Google. > The tech visionaries’ predictions did not usher us into the future, but rather a future where they are kings This line tells me that the author has gotten used to modern day conveniences that tech has brought us and thinks its unpredictable that people who made companies that span the globe are rich and powerful.