Considering it and II as neutral tools, we obscure our ability to see and resist strength. If only one of the three large technological giants fall apart, Societal Mayhem can lead.
We almost intuitively understand that geography is not a thought for politics, but a substrate on which political life is built. A flat, fertile land along the Hudson River allowed large estates and semi -shaped A tenant in the 18th and 19th centuries, which in turn led to hierarchical Local self -government systems. A Rocky hills with Vermont, on the contrary,
Dispersed such consolidation and succumbed to agriculture involved in the junior City meetings. The most geographies made no sense, but they were not side questions: they created material conditions that facilitated the flowering certain systems, and others fell.
The same for information technology. And yet too often we view this as abstract and neutral, obscuring our ability to see the authorities and fight the necessary battles that we need to manage ourselves.
Ten years ago most businesses kept their Data on the site; today majority Of all business data are stored outside the site. The same thing for personal data-remember if your email was on your computer rather than “there”? The amount spent on storage outside the site may soon approach $ 1 trillion (we are already ashamed of $ 700 billion).
While the word cloud It suggests something ephemeral, the reality is the same physical as the dirt. The data stored in the cloud is physically placed on servers, usually in Big Data Processing CentersEither server farms that require a huge amount of energy to maintain. Just three companies-amazon, Microsoft and Google control over two-third of this critical market.
Recent report ”Engineering Cloud Commons. ”By the open markets institute shows how the big one has used a series of aggrassive tools to protect their cloud Dominance. They use opaque pricing, charge different amounts Make it unnecessarily different to switch providers, and exploit their on other platforms to push users to their own service.Competition Oreclose In one of the most dangerous concentrated Technology: artificial intelligence.
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These anti-channel methods are types of abuse that legislation against monopoly is designed to prevent. And they are especially dangerous with the cloud because, as in detail, there are “congenital market characteristics” – Kupria obstacle to the entrance, huge Requirements for capital– which already makes concentration very likely Not inevitable.
Considering the cloud as a neutral, we were at great danger. The concentration significantly increases the risk of broad system failure. If only one of the three large technological giants falls apart, society pope You can follow: closure of the hospital, data violations, business disasters. Even without the collapse we put ourselves in position Radical dependence greater than society on large shores. Not only did the great technologies have become too big and too built -in to fail; Firms know that they can use this power to dictate politics. Some democratic risks are more direct: Amazon. Googleand Microsoft already demonstrated themselves ready suppress a certain speech and amplify Others. A cloud property is also owned by speech -related data.
The open markets report suggests an immediate remedy: cloud suppliers must work in public interests by offering fair and equal access to infrastructure with public supervision and regulation of rates. Secondly, since such services cannot coexist with monopoly property, the Great Troika will have to deprive them of their interests.
The II report often views this as an abstract force, separate from the physical architecture that allows it. We talk about AI as “doing things” without referring to the physical infrastructure it requires, or the corporate systems it serves. We erase the layers. We consider models, chips and data centers as insignificant, when, in fact, they are as structured, owned and managed as a plant or plantation.
We also consider technology and expanding the architecture of information as neutral. Willay Gibson’s novelist perfectly observe“Technology is morally neutral until we use them.” Barack Obama repeatedly described Digital technologies as “tools”, neutral by themselves, the consequences of which depend on their use. Noam Homski did similar Argument: “Technology is mostly neutral. It’s like a hammer. The hammer does not care whether you use it to build a home or … to crush someone’s skull.”
Both abstraction and neutrality perform a dangerous social function: they tie strength. “The established power always seeks to darken or prohibit the thinking about the organization that supports their power,” Joe Castella recently recently observeWriting about information systems. The information organization is one of the most subsequent forms of power in today’s society, which gives power a powerful incentive to use the language of neutrality and abstraction to hide it.
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Information lives in supply chains, optical cables, content protocols, chips, algorithmic hierarchy and Server farms in Virginia and Arizon. You do not need to understand how all this is technically connected with the fact that the corporations have infrastructure and run the services that depend on it, creates an impossible conflict of interest at the heart of our society.
Because open markets report on documents, three large corporations that control the infrastructure also dominate the II, advertising, retail and state contracts. They receive billions of dollars privileged access to the most valuable contribution of the 21st Century Economics-which they then use for us. Functional democracy cannot depend on Microsoft’s favor.
Today, the next area of political and economic force will no longer land. This is information. And just like geography, structures that form and control information, form the conditions of freedom.
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