It’s Smart to Be Wrong

 

by: James Belew


Not only here at newspapercup.com, but in many circles, including the Federal Government, there have been long discussions about breaking up big tech. I have been all for it. Facebook likely sells your data to the highest bidder, or worse, they give it away. Ironically, I will need Facebook to get this message out, as well as Twitter. Google owns a bit of everything. Alexa is listening to you. The phone companies are giving your data to the CIA. These are facts.

This is among the reasons that I have supported this move in the past. By the past, I am referring to yesterday. Then, I woke up this morning and thought to myself, “We can do better.”  I realized, “Maybe I am wrong.” Facebook is not the most difficult concept to code. In fact, it is cloned in many forms. Any site that requires you to have a login and allows you to post to a list basically achieves the same thing. Isn’t Facebook just Myspace 2.0? If we don’t like the way a company does business, we just go to a different one. In this case, the government thinks that you are too stupid or weak to change yourselves, so they need to intervene.

It’s not just Facebook though. Look at Amazon. They have an online store. Also, this is not that hard to make. Anyone with a decent amount of coding knowledge can build you one. I can build you one, and I’ve only been coding for a year. These companies are expanding, but none of them compare to the juggernauts Apple and Google. At the end of the day, Google’s main product is a search engine and Apple makes computers and phones. I know this is an oversimplification, but these are the driving forces behind their success. No one of these companies has can make our technology what it is alone. There is no monopoly. There is competition. So, let’s keep competing.

It’s Up to Us

There are 100’s of 1,000’s of people that can make these things. If as a group, we’ve decided, “Fuck these people,” and we decide to innovate, there is nothing Americans can’t accomplish. These current companies developed through some hard work and belief. The reason science fiction becomes reality is because we can make our dreams happen. If we can think it, we  will it into existence. The future does not have to be a dystopian authoritarian nightmare. So, we have willed George Orwell’s 1984 into existence. The iPads in Stanley Kubrick’s 1969 movie “Space Odyssey: 2001” exist in reality. If we can dream it, we can make it. So, let’s dream of something better. This is our trip. So, let’s trip better.

These companies know this. You take down Napster; we make Pirate Bay. Youtube decides to delete copyrighted content; we’ll all move to Vimeo. If you build a wall, we’ll build a tunnel. You try to take our guns, we’ll make rocket launchers. Many of us don’t have faith in America’s Government, but I have faith in Americans. I have faith in myself. I have faith in us. We are all part of the same elegant beautiful organism. If part of that organism is diseased, the organism itself finds a way to heal itself. We may be sick, but we are not dead. Have some faith in us, and have some faith in yourself, because we’re one.

 

 

 

 

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