Tech’s broken promises: Streaming is now just as expensive and confusing as cable. Ubers cost as much as taxis. And the cloud is no longer cheap::Some tech is getting pricier and looking a lot like the older services it was supposed to beat. From video streaming to ride-hailing and cloud computing.
This has nothing to do with tech and EVERYTHING to do with FUCKING CAPITALISM.
What a dumb fucking post, tech didn’t promise us shit were still living in a capitalist nightmare where quarterly earnings are far and above the primary value, over any and all people.
What the fuck is this waaaa tech didn’t usher in an age of utopia!!! It’s almost like we have to solve other problems first. Fucks sake
Can we actually have a discussion on what’s at hand here instead of knee jerk reactions?
Perhaps you had to have been there for all the “building better worlds” and “bringing people together” horseshit every silicon valley company was spewing since the dot com boom in the 2000’s
It’s not an actual promise so don’t act pedantic. The point is- society was sold these concepts and ideas as solutions to existing problems, and they’ve instead become bigger and more expensive problems.
Honestly, not to blame the public, but people were sitting here for the last decade going, don’t like being censored? Don’t use Google/Facebook/whatever. Don’t like being tracked across the internet? Don’t use Google/Facebook/whatever. And everyone kept using it. As for streaming services, I mean, if you don’t want monopolistic pricing power, abolish copyright/DMCA. We complain constantly about the consequences of these big corps but society keeps religiously buying shit from them or participating in their services. Just like complaining constantly about global warming but driving your car 3 miles to the store to get a 1L bottle of water. We set up these structures and put people in these positions where they can exploit you, then act surprised when they do, and we have an excuse for why we think every individual part of it needs to stay exactly the same.
OK, maybe to blame the public a little.
17 years is enough.
Cheaper has never been a promise of big tech. Better, personalized, more convenient, flexible, faster. Cheaper? I missed the promise where we’d get all these benefits for nothing, and in fact be given discounts for getting all these benefits.
Before anyone starts: yes Uber is better than a taxi. Yes, cloud computing is better than on-premises. I’m so sad for this author who can’t work their streaming services, but as bad as cable? Give me a break.
Yea cable sucked way more, atleast we aren’t locked into contracts with these services. Subscribe for a month watch the last years entire catalog and unsubscribe, rinse and repeat. You don’t need every subscription to be always active.
For now. Long term contracts are coming to streaming
Haha good luck with forcing people into a contract when you got like 2 shows airing at any given time. If they want a contract the content has to explode by atleast 4 fold
Yyyyep. The way they package channels is so irritating. And the advertising load you get with cable TV is intolerable to me. My parents are conditioned to it after decades but it drives me insane fast.
That’s why I just bittorrent the fuck out of everything. I’ll never play the game.
Yeah, but they said those things before going public or when a few people had the vast majority of shares.
If they cash out, there’s now a board in control, and the big investors want big returns. So that’s the direction companies inevitably go.
Because if capitalism.
It might be the same company, but it’s often not the same people calling the shots
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“Tech” doesn’t exist. Entire concept is a lie propagated by companies trying to appear like something different.
Not a tech company - a taxi company, a short term rental company, a video distribution company …
Look at what they sell, not what tools they use to do it.
Uber isn’t a taxi company. They don’t own a fleet. They’re a company that makes an app.
Um, not sure where you live but in most cities I know taxi companies don’t own the fleet
Capitalism would never allow utopia to come about, because the concept of utopia doesn’t allow for an unequal distribution of goods. The inequality is very much a feature, not a bug.
I’m not usually one for an ad hominem, but it’s business insider—that’s probably one conclusion they are incapable of arriving at
Not incapable, unwilling.
I guess the thing where tech is relevant is that regulations thought it was different, so they didn’t apply the rules against dumping and other illegal tactics (“because they’re a start-up, it’s different when they lose money year over year”).
Technology has and will always be awesome…… unless it’s in a society that is structured in an inherently exploitative way.
Did you mean exploitative?
Yup thanks!
Well, you’re right that the bigger issue is people expecting tech to solve social problems created by social structure. But Yes, tech is absolutely failing at this. How could it not?
Why not instead take this show of contempt for tech as another chance for people to recognize the underlying issue, not as a threat to the future of tech developments.
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