Is Big Tech Needlessly Ruining Entire Industries?

Salon tech editor Keith A. Spencer just published a new article describing what happens when 'venture capital-backed entrepreneurs jackhammer their way into a new industry, 'tech'-ify it in some way, undermine the competition and declare their new way superior once the old is bankrupted.'

- Being a taxi driver was once a much-vaunted job, so much so that a taxi medallion was perceived of as a ticket to the middle class. Then came Uber and Lyft, who flooded the market for private transit and undercut the taxi industry by de-skilling the industry and paying their workers far, far less....

- Building devices to quantize as much fitness data as possible wasn't an example of capitalism fulfilling consumer desire -- no one, save a few data scientists, ever said, 'I want to turn my leisure activities and exercise regime into spreadsheets' -- but the tech industry has been very effective at making us desire just that....

- The thing is, baristas and cashiers aren't things that we are all dying to get rid of... Silicon Valley is only trying to put baristas and cashiers out of business because human labor costs money; the difference between a $4 coffee from a robot and a $4 coffee from a human is that there are no labor costs in the former purchase, something that makes Silicon Valley go googly-eyed with dollar signs. The tech industry's vision of the future is of a world with less human interaction, less conversation, less humanity; and more surveillance and more monetization of our buying habits. No one wants this, but it's being forced upon us.
The article is adapted from Spencer's recent book, A People's History of Silicon Valley: How the Tech Industry Exploits Workers, Erodes Privacy and Undermines Democracy.

The article's title? 'Silicon Valley makes everything worse: Four industries that Big Tech has ruined.'

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