Silicon Valley. We’re known by the world for being a tech hub that is constantly stimulated by ideas, creativity, and innovation. We’re known for “thinking different”, thanks to Steve Jobs. In our coffee driven culture that ensues productivity, this is civilization that we promote. We’re not laid back, we constantly work—propelled and sustained by our caffeine. A few byproducts, or negative externalities, of course include mental health symptoms and anxiety, as well as tech workers causing displacement through gentrification.
We’re especially known for all of this, because we’re struggling to find a balance between consumption and production. And the ones to blame are the looming monopoly and oligopoly tech giants. They are part of the problem of why we are finding it so difficult to separate from our lives: from personal assistants of Siri to storing our memories through photos, documents, and other files to becoming stuck down an internet rabbit hole through the endless scrolling of social media and limitless clicking of recommendations on youtube. They are effectively made by tech giants to be dominating and addictive.
As we learned about the Disney and Universal in the “In media universe, the force is strongest with Disney, Universal” Article, parallel exclusion is when two companies dominate an industry and collude to keep barriers of entries high in order to exclude future businesses to compete, making it difficult to jump into the market and deter start ups. This targeting of their competitors discourages innovation. From tablets to smartphones, Samsung, Google, and Apple manages to maintain the oligopolistic market with their high production costs, economies of scale, and ownership of raw materials.
It is individuality and diverse thinking that led to the rise of Silicon Valley, let’s reclaim our iconic culture back.
No comments:
Post a Comment