It’s not about whether I trust Sam Altman or any other Big Tech executive. It’s about the disturbing amount of power these executives have and their ability to act in ways that have profound consequences downstream, from cornering the RAM market to making the world less hospitable to the vision of computing empowering everyday users, not just vendors.
Remember Apple’s 1984 commercial where IBM was personified as Big Brother and where Apple was liberator? Today I feel that Big Tech is today’s Big Brother. I love computing and I have a career devoted to it, but I don’t love Big Tech, and my opinion has soured in the last decade. I used to dream of working for Google, and I still think one of the highlights of my career was working on Spanner as an intern. But that was when Larry Page and Sergey Brin were still in charge, when Google still had “don’t be evil” as its motto.
I’m still trying to think about ways to make a living outside of academia where one can make and sell great, user-respecting tech solutions. I have a lot of ideas about what I’d like to build, but I struggle to think of ways to monetize them.
Remember Apple’s 1984 commercial where IBM was personified as Big Brother and where Apple was liberator? Today I feel that Big Tech is today’s Big Brother. I love computing and I have a career devoted to it, but I don’t love Big Tech, and my opinion has soured in the last decade. I used to dream of working for Google, and I still think one of the highlights of my career was working on Spanner as an intern. But that was when Larry Page and Sergey Brin were still in charge, when Google still had “don’t be evil” as its motto.
I’m still trying to think about ways to make a living outside of academia where one can make and sell great, user-respecting tech solutions. I have a lot of ideas about what I’d like to build, but I struggle to think of ways to monetize them.