Technology Colonialism

jrepin sends an editorial from Anjuan Simmons on how tech companies are behaving more and more in a manner that evokes colonialism. Quoting: Technology companies are increasingly being treated like sovereign nations. A nation with sovereignty has a right to conduct its internal affairs without interference from other nations. ... When technology companies are feted by foreign ministers and also refuse an invitation from the leader of their own country of origin, they exhibit the characteristics of a group that wants to be treated as a peer to heads of state. Technology companies understand the power they wield in the global economy. ... If Silicon Valley is allowed to become the central repository of information about people around the world, then there is a danger of setting up a form of imperialism based on personal data. Just as the royal powers of old reached far into the lives of distant colonized people, technology companies gain immense control with every terabyte of personal data they store and analyze.

Comments

Acting like != being

[gurps_npc]

Look, my 6 year old niece acts like a queen, that doesn't make her one.

Their are significant differences between corporations and countries.

Corporations care about money above all else - countries care about many things.

Corporations don't publicly arrest, imprison, or kill people, all countries do this, all the time, publicly, etc.

Corporations don't care about location, countries build it into their system

Some corporations agree to subordination, while all countries insist on superiority/equality (Countries always claim that they are in charge, not the corporations - even if in reality is the other way around).

I have seen no corporation coming anywhere close to claiming to have the powers of a country. It simply does not exist.

Re:Acting like != being

[mrchaotica]

To make my previous post more clear: the letter I linked to was the governor explaining why he vetoed the bill that would give private security officers the same powers as commissioned police. As of two days ago, his veto was overridden and that bill is now law.

Re:Translation:

[epyT-R]

Oh wow, this article reads like a pravda piece might have during the height of the cold war. Lets do a sanity check. We have two 'trigger' words in this summary: 'colonialism' and 'imperialism', in newspeak contexts. Lets click on the link and see... Ah, the slogan is "Technology, culture and diversity media." We have another newspeak term: 'diversity', as any individual daring to identify as an individual or, worse, act in his own interest, is obviously a racist, sexist 'imperialist' pig dead set on world domination. Care to guess the politics of the submitter and/or the source?

However, despite being invited, Zuckerberg, Marissa Mayer, and Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, perhaps feeling their own imperial bona fides, decided to skip the president’s speech.

Like, how DARE they skip out on Dear Leader??! They need to check their privilege!

I'm all for protecting personal identity, rights, and liberty from predatory people and organizations (private AND public!), but this source is just a tad biased, folks. Too biased for its analysis to be much use. This article spends too much time bitching about the corp-rats, and no time dealing with the big elephants in the room, the ones issuing mandatory surveillance law and gag orders to silence criticism and dissent from those who would rather opt out. If the political culture in western countries still respected individual rights over groupthink knee jerking, we wouldn't have half the privacy concerns we do.