When I was a young man in the 1970s, tech firms were scattered across the developed world. Since then, America has come to dominate tech almost totally.
It's often taken for granted that the most dominant tech companies control the world's most important technology and communications platforms. Instead, the truth is that these giants run on top of the world's most important platform: the mobile communications networks.
As the world of chips and glass fibers and wireless waves goes, so goes the rest of the world
I am worried that algorithms are getting too prominent in the world. It started out that computer scientists were worried nobody was listening to us. Now I'm worried that too many people are listening.
The United States ran the table on Internet innovations, creating companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Intel, Apple, Cisco, Twitter, Amazon, eBay, YouTube, and others. Europe and Japan scarcely contributed.
Thus it is no longer a Caesar or a Napoleon who decides on the fate of any particular war but a piece of software! In short, the political intelligence of war and the political intelligence of society no longer penetrate the techno-scientific world.
Imagine a world where Apple, Google, and Intel were Chinese companies. It would be scary.
Apps, email, and social are the three things Google does not control.
The only thing Google has failed to do, so far, is fail.
It's easy to lose the humanity when you start showcasing tech.
Everyone knows that Apple crushed Microsoft in the mobile era. But it was exactly the opposite in the PC Wars of the 1980s and 1990s.
Microsoft has been taking a series of steps for a while now to close down the Windows ecosystem. They can't do it all at once, because there would be an industry uproar. But one little step at a time, they're trying to take it all over.
