> It feels as though much of tech has gone from helping people accomplish their goals efficiently to a business model of extracting rents while providing no or little value.
This isn't new. So much of what we consider "value" today is just information asymmetry. Hiding phone numbers, hiding true costs, stuffing data into a proprietary database with a service contract, hiding whoever the real manufacturer of something is… that is where the money is made.
The Internet was supposed to fix that, but instead of getting an "Internet" we got a series of private networks, loosely connected, with gatekeepers. You can visit different ones, but they don't' really talk to each other. You can add your own information, but it won't really get seen by anyone because everyone has been conditioned to go through one of the big gates.
We tried for a while, with things like open protocols and semantic web, but most people quickly realized there was a lot more money to be had creating walled gardens.
This isn't new. So much of what we consider "value" today is just information asymmetry. Hiding phone numbers, hiding true costs, stuffing data into a proprietary database with a service contract, hiding whoever the real manufacturer of something is… that is where the money is made.
The Internet was supposed to fix that, but instead of getting an "Internet" we got a series of private networks, loosely connected, with gatekeepers. You can visit different ones, but they don't' really talk to each other. You can add your own information, but it won't really get seen by anyone because everyone has been conditioned to go through one of the big gates.
We tried for a while, with things like open protocols and semantic web, but most people quickly realized there was a lot more money to be had creating walled gardens.