They push society forward along THEIR agenda.
That agenda can be the most open, inclusive and diverse agenda ever, but it's gonna be the agenda of a corporation nonetheless.
In my ideal world, you know who should be in charge of such a push? American friends, please, breathe deeply: The State should.
I'm largely a social democrat, but LOL if you think the government would be even a quarter as competent as Google at pushing technology forward.
Just read any description from people who've worked at both normal government IT shops (really anywhere that's not 18F or the USDS) and private industry how they feel about governmental technology culture and processes.
Like okay, investing in infrastructure, like putting fiber everywhere? Sure, I'm down with that. Everything else, I think the private sector has shown itself to be plenty more capable. Let's let the government stick to its strengths, shall we?
> I'm largely a social democrat, but LOL if you think the government would be even a quarter as competent as Google at pushing technology forward.
> Just read any description from people who've worked at both normal government IT shops (really anywhere that's not 18F or the USDS) and private industry how they feel about governmental technology culture and processes.
The governments brought us MP3. (Fraunhofer is funded entirely by their own patents and the German government).
The governments brought us many more technologies, standards, algorithms, etc.
Alone the projects funded by the German government have brought more to the tech world than Google ever has, or ever will.
Then look at the projects the US has funded.
For fucks sake, the US Government gave us the Internet!
This.
But of course US Americans (including foreigners living there long enough) will just interpret the World according to the usual equation: US == World.
It's not your fault guys and we love you the way you're wired, but for god's sake, could you sometimes consider there's some form of Intelligent Life outside of your borders?
I don't necessarily disagree with the premise, but I take pause at the notion that the American state does not have its own agenda.
We've seen the state infiltrate encryption standards to deliberately weaken them. We've seen the state deny and attempt to suppress dissident truths. We've seen the state spy on its citizenry using loopholes and non-standards. We've seen the state fund drug cartels, collude with the media to influence the public, pass cronyist legislation to benefit campaign donors, etc.
Why should their agenda be considered any less self-serving than that of a corporation's?
In theory and in an actual democracy the state would represent the will of the people, and its agenda would align with the citizenry.
In the US at least I don't think it is so much the government doesn't represent the people than 2 centuries of usurpation have established a system to produce enough brainwashed drones to the will of power that they can act with the facade of democracy while actively harming the indoctrinated. It seems not to actually take a majority to create an environment where the state acts against the interests of the people, just enough of a minority to give voice and legitimacy to regressive ideology.
I think this century might be the time when all us intellectuals have to come to terms with how, in the same way you cannot get everyone into STEM to handle automation eating the economy, you cannot get everyone into enlightened politics where voters inform themselves with fact and evidence. At best, a minority, and today, a majority of people are either naturally or nurtured (often intentionally) to be incapable of participation in science and rational debate. And as long as you have this uninformed, illogical portion of the population (and of course the smaller it is the more functional your society is) it will erode democracy and liberty through powerful people taking advantage of that weakness.
What we see in the US right now is that weakness in Democracy instead being a gaping wound that has been bleeding - probably since the founding of the country, made worse by many events in history (the civil war, great depression, 9/11) that make the wound bleed greater, yielding the state from being a democracy to an oligarchy ruled by ideological indoctrination and exploitation rather than good will for ones fellow man.
That was long winded, but my point is don't throw out the notion that nations can act to improve the circumstances of their people in the general case - the US is demonstrably not doing that for observable reasons that could be fixed, but would require everyone to want to fix it.
