People seem to have an unending, unquestioning love affair with technology. But this article indicates that this may be changing. As the tech companies amass significant wealth and power, a backlash among governments has appeared. After giving carte-blanche in their early days, regulators are becoming concerned about the vast numbers of users, unending data flow, and massive influence these companies now possess.

Tech companies have accrued a tremendous amount of power and influence. Amazon determines how people shop, Google how they acquire knowledge, Facebook how they communicate. All of them are making decisions about who gets a digital megaphone and who should be unplugged from the web. … Their amount of concentrated authority resembles the divine right of kings and is sparking a backlash that is still gathering force.

One would think that tech users would be the most concerned, having already been effectively transformed from consumers of technology to “the product” sold by tech companies. But that doesn’t seem to be the case yet. Some would say we’ve already become more dependent on modern tech than is healthy. And that’s without AI, which is still in its early stages. Will people ever give up their phones and social media as we know them to regain something of their privacy and perhaps autonomy? Or will society eventually find itself observed, categorized, judged, and directed by the companies that once seemed so cool?

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