For every microsecond level ad auction broker there’s a free Android update, cat video platform enhancement, calendar app feature, or type checked scripting language release.
HFT on the other hand — now there’s a tech black hole!
[edited to add What have the Romans ever done for us?, below]
It brought panhandling to where generosity once prevailed.
It brought us social media engagement metrics and 140-character-limited 'interaction' and cluttered, flashing, distracting, human-psyche hacking interfaces.
It brought all the c*nts who only saw dollar signs.
Agree on HFT.
(Disclaimer: I'm focusing on the negatives to make a point, there probably are some wild benefits, but I'm on the side of preferring to have taken longer to get there without all the examples I've listed - yes, I'm wishing for utopia, it's my comment I can say what I want).
Edited to add: People would share their cats whether or not internet advertising existed. The cats would demand it.
That's a false dichotomy.
First of all, the technology is far from "free". It's easily accessible, perhaps, but users pay handsomely to use it, even if they're unaware of it, which most adtech companies go out of their way to ensure.
Secondly, advertising isn't the only business model companies can choose. Far from it. It may be the most profitable, and the easiest to deploy, simply because adtech companies have made it so. Companies can just as well choose to prioritize user experience, user privacy, and all the things they claim to care deeply about, over their revenues, which is what they actually care about.
Oh, and lastly, I would strongly argue that social media, web search, office suites, etc., are hardly "amazing" technology. There are very good alternatives to all of these that don't come with the drawbacks of ad-supported software. It's just that adtech companies are also unsurprisingly quite good at advertising themselves, and using their position and vast resources to dominate the market.
Those bastards have bled us dry with their algorithms, taken all the data we had, and not just from us, but from our children, our children's children, our children's children's children, our children's children's children's children... and what have they ever given us in return?
The search engine
...and a free phone OS
Oh yeah, the phone OS! Remember what the flip phones used to be like?
OK, but apart from the search engine and the phone OS...
Global Street View coverage!
Oh yes yes, oh that's a good one! So useful!
Chrome and Chromium
Well obviously that goes without saying: the browsers are very good
Docs and Sheets. I can't do me shopping without 'em!
Oh yes yes! -all nod-
OK, but apart from the search engine, the phone OS, the street view, the browsers, all the open source work, scholar, an office suite, an open DNS resolver, web fonts, gmail, and video calling, what has Google ever done for us?
But does anyone else feel we might need to cross the search engine off this list soon? Since whatever happened which is reducing the usefulness of Google search (Search Engine Optimisation?), is search better now than it was in the pre-Google days?
Tangential question - would search engine optimisation have been less effective/destructive if there was more variety in the search engine people choose?
For example, email. I use free emails since the 90s, never paid for it. I went long stretches having no disposable income at all - if I had to pay for email, I would have dropped it multiple times. However email is a postal box in the Internet - people don't stop sending you emails just because you decided that this month, a bag of rice is more valuable than an email subscription
(Nowadays email is like your online identity. People don't send you emails, instead, it's all services you use that send you access codes. Losing your email is truly scary)
On the other hand, I really loved the backup service of Colin Percival, tarsnap. It's an ultracapitalist, even libertarian, and it seemed to me very fair that you would pay for exactly what you use. If you stop paying he deletes your data, on the spot, no questions asked. (actually not sure if there's a grace period for permanent removal. but even if there is, this makes no difference for people that don't have money)
I had to stop paying due to life circumstances, I lost a backup.
I still have backups from around the same time in Google Drive, even without paying anything.
So really if we live under capitalism and such essential services like email and backup MUST be provided by private entities, then we really, really need ads and ad supported business that gives users permanent free stuff.
Fortunately capitalism can't and won't last forever. (but unfortunately it will surely outlast me and you)
Was advertising necessary to produce all of this inarguably useful technology? Is this technology somehow unique in the world?
There are alternatives to all of those products that are not monetized via advertising. You may argue that they're not good enough, and I may agree to some extent, but they certainly work well enough for many people who decide to not use Google and other ad supported products and services.
Google et al don't have a monopoly on "amazing" technology. They just dominate the market to make it seem like they do.
Besides, it's not like Google developed these products in a vacuum (except perhaps early web search). Many of them are based on the work of other companies and individuals, which they either acquired, forked, or depend on. Which is fine, but the point is that not all of it is built and maintained entirely by G.[1]
[1]: The Roman analogy actually works in this sense as well, since accomplishments of the Roman empire were also largely based on work borrowed, adapted, or simply stolen from others. So were all the atrocities they committed necessary to advance technology? Perhaps. But if alternatives existed during their time that didn't come with the same downsides, I'm sure people would choose to use those instead, which is where your analogy falls flat. :)
Mobile phones were always tracking bugs, but smartphones/Android made the surveillance much worse.
> Global Street View coverage!
At least in Germany still a quite controversial topic.
> Chrome and Chromium
By Google's aggressive advertising, it took an insane amount of market share of the much more privacy-focused Firefox web browser.
> Docs and Sheets.
Better use some offline-first office suite.
1) You're conflating the "smartest people" with tech companies. The point of the quote is that people's careers are funneled towards ads. 2) The technology is not free and amazing. It may give consumers some marginal utility, but it's making them dependent on the system and recording most interactions they have with it. It's a widespread system of surveillance and control, and the tech companies are in charge.
Oh wait, your post was written by an LLM.
so faded and worn out from wear
always getting used