Читать книгу The Unintended Consequences of Technology - Chris Ategeka - Страница 31

Tech-states have brought to bear many benefits and positive advancements for humankind, as you may know. In fact, it's possible you may be reading this book with the aid of one of their products. If we were to focus on all their advantages, that could take up the space of this entire book. Therefore, I will point out just a few.

Being so large means these organizations can make big investments in the future and big investments in R&D, and much faster and better than any nation-state could do. Take entrepreneur Elon Musk and his companies as an example. His company Tesla is on a mission to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy. Elon and Tesla's big bets of venturing into the unknown world of research and development have proved that people don't need to compromise to drive electric cars. Electric vehicles can be better, quicker, and more fun to drive than gasoline cars. The same daring spirit can be said about his other company, SpaceX. Its mission is to revolutionize the aerospace industry and make affordable spaceflight a reality. SpaceX plans not only to land humans on Mars but also to colonize Mars. Space exploration used to be the work of nation-states; now it's mostly done by private companies and made possible by big investments in R&D. In fact, nation-states are now contracting tech-states to do this work for them, as shown by the NASA/SpaceX partnerships, as well as by many other collaborations like it (McFall-Johnsen and Mosher, 2020).

Furthermore, tech-state companies are better positioned to deliver large-scale services to the market, because they have the tools, resources, and infrastructure to do so. Because of their size, cash in hand, and many other factors, they can survive market slowdowns in ways small companies cannot. This was very evident during the COVID-19 pandemic (Sundaram, 2020).

The pandemic challenged most of us on a personal level; however, business-wise, it hasn't been bad for everyone. Big tech leaders like Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google have all seen their market values increase this past year. Furthermore, all of these companies were poised to play a significant role in helping the world recover from coronavirus, using their technological prowess to do everything from tracking coronavirus spread to managing tests and vaccines to improving overall distribution workflows (Newman, 2021).

Tech-state also contributes greatly to the GDP of the nation-state. The world's largest companies are in the technology sector, and four out of five of those tech-states companies have grown to trillion-dollar market capitalizations (Wallach, 2019). As technology use continues to increase, their revenue forecast will only continue to grow.

Clearly, there are plenty of advantages to having these huge tech companies around, and there are many books out there dedicated to the subject. However, this book focuses mostly on the other side of the argument and looks at aspects of these companies that are not serving humanity's best interests. Let's dive into those issues next.