The Upside of Being Ruled by the Five Tech Giants<br />You’ve got one or two big firms, and they have a lot of public pressure to be a responsible actor.”<br />Over the last few weeks, many people at large tech companies have repeatedly responded to my questions about the dangers posed by big tech with<br />a funny argument: Yes, they would say, the other tech giants really are worrisome — so why was I including their company in that group?<br />“This is new stuff everybody is dealing with — it’s not easy,” said Rob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a think tank, and co-author of “Big Is Beautiful,” a coming book<br />that extols the social and economic virtues of big companies.<br />But none of the Five see themselves as part of a group — each of them worries about the threat posed by start-ups and by the other four giants, which means<br />that none feels it has the luxury to slow down in creating the best new stuff.<br />And not only do they keep creating new tech, but they are coming at it in diverse ways<br />— with different business models, different philosophies and different sets of ethics.<br />One benefit of having five giant companies in charge of today’s tech infrastructure is<br />that they provide a convenient focus for addressing those problems.<br />Over the last few weeks, several scholars said there are good reasons to be sanguine about our new tech overlords.
