#KnowNothingCISO Disclaimer Applies
THE EIGHT DUDES
Fractal thougts Triggerer by Steve Jones post on the article by Tim Berners Lee on the 35th birthday of the Web.
“5 years ago, when the web turned 30, I called out some of the dysfunction caused by the web being dominated by the self-interest of several corporations that have eroded the web’s values and led to breakdown and harm” -TBL
I am a big fan of TBL, but looks like in 68 years he never understood human nature and human behavior. Power always has a tendency to concentrate.
“Concentration of power is the problem” by Mark Hurst
Quote Mark
the unjust and inhuman concentration of power in a few hands, to a degree that arguably has no historical precedent
the problems we’re facing from technology are caused by the concentration of power. As I like to put it, all of the world’s money and power, outside China, is swiftly being handed over to eight dudes in Silicon Valley.
Shall we count up the dudes, all dudes, running the companies? Cook, Nadella, Pichai and his shadow bosses Page and Brin, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Musk. (Yes, I know Bezos is executive chairman, not CEO. Still.)
* Power has always had a tendency to concentrate. Stated another way, powerful people have always tended to focus on gaining more power. This is nothing new.
* What is new is that digital technology allows power to be exerted on a global scale, consistently, with minimal human involvement.
* Thus power in the digital age will tend to be concentrated in the hands of a minimal number of people, who will use the available tools to protect their power and gain even more.
*This process of concentration also means that, by definition, power will be drained out of a vast and growing expanse of society. People affected – the majority of people in society – will eventually rise up to resist the process, unless some counteracting force is applied.
* The tiny group of people holding onto power will use digital tools to their fullest extent, enacting surveillance and control mechanisms – both to be warned of any nascent resistance, and to apply distraction, manipulation, or outright control to negate any challenge to their power
It’s no coincidence that the Big Tech companies, as different as they are, have recently converged on the same, single business model of surveillance and control
Unquote
Eight dudes! Close your eyes and imagine for a second, that the power of the world is concentrated with eight dudes. Sam Altman is not yet a dude.. he is dude in the making, he is funded by one of the dudes and one of the other dude is not happy about it. The markets are also not very happy about one dude, they say he is not accelerating the concentration faster
We thought blockchain will liberate us from this concentration, with true distributed and decentralization architecture giving the power back to the “people”. But the dudes made sure that does not happen
We the people has been replaced by We the Dudes!
Raman PK
Any article that includes the phrase "when I invented the web" in its first sentence is going to be worth a read.
A very interesting call to action by TBL, about how individuals can be in control of their own data through the Solid Protocol and about how change is going to require concerted action. While TBL says he couldn't imagine what the web would have become, he is pretty clearly saying "but not this".
![Marking the Web’s 35th Birthday: An Open Letter]()
Marking the Web’s 35th Birthday: An Open Letter
link.medium.com
Tim Berners-Lee 's post is spot on about the current state of the Web. The centralization and data exploitation are major threats to the open and democratic internet we once knew. I'd like to see solutions that break down platform silos and create a more interoperable web. And the current data market treats users as products, not participants. Privacy-preserving ad tech could give users back control of their information.