After the Pandemic, Will Big Tech Companies Be Unstoppable?

After the pandemic is over, “The tech giants could have all the power,” warns Recode co-founder Kara Swisher, " and absolutely none of the accountability — at least all the power that will truly matter."

This is the conclusion that many are coming to as the post-pandemic future begins to come into focus. Wall Street sure is signaling that the power lies with tech companies, vaulting the stock of Amazon to close to $2,400 a share earlier this week, from $1,838 at the end of January. While the price fell on Friday to $2,286 a share, after Amazon’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos, said he would spend future profits on the coronavirus response, that still gives the company a value of $1.14 trillion. And all the other Big Tech stocks, which were hit in the first weeks of the pandemic, also are on an upward march to the top of the market-cap heap. Microsoft at $1.32 trillion. Apple at $1.26 trillion. Alphabet at $900 billion. And Facebook at $577 billion. This group now makes up just over 20 percent of the S.&P. 500, which is a flashing yellow signal of what is to come.

That is to say, we live in a country in which the very big tech firms will be the very big winners in the economy of the future, which still does not look like it will be so pretty for most people and many companies, too…

I neither hate tech nor think most people who work in tech are bad people. But when this crisis is over, I can say that we most certainly should fear Big Tech more because these companies will be freer than ever, with many fewer strictures on them from regulators and politicians. The effort to rein in tech companies had been building decent momentum before coronavirus outbreak, but it will be harder when focus needs to be on building up rather than breaking apart.

Now, as we turn to the healthy companies to help us revive the economy, it could be that the only ones with real immunity are the tech giants. In this way, Covid-19 has accelerated their rise and tightened their grip on our lives. And this consolidation of power, combined with Big Tech’s control of data, automation, robotics, artificial intelligence, media, advertising, retail and even autonomous tech, is daunting.

6 Likes

it means in future govt will totally rely on BIG TECH FIRMS.
may be possible BIG-TECH Giant will get SOME GOOD AMOUNT OF POWER.
PEOPLES SUPPORTING BIG-TECH GIANT RATHER THAN GOVT. SCHEMES AND MONOPALY SO MAY BE IT COULD BE POSSIBLE THAT IN FUTURE TECHGIANT WILL RULE COUNTRY INSTEAD OF GOVT
AS THEY CAN CHANGE ELECTION RESULT BY USING ONLINE DATA BREACH.

WHATS UR VIEW BOSS. (KEEN INTERSTED TO KNOW)

strange times

The pandemic will definitely be an excuse to keep the hand governments have on our privacy.

Here’s Edward Snowden on this very issue ↓ ↓ ↓

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During the coronavirus outbreak, governments could raise concerns about public health and send orders to smartphones and fitness trackers for information about pulse and heart rate.

Once the pandemic ends, they could raise other fears, like terrorism, and continue to gather the data.

They already know what you’re looking at on the internet. They already know where your phone is moving. Now they know what your heart rate is, what your pulse is. What happens when they start to intermix these and apply artificial intelligence to it?