The Apple parable, from creativity to hoarding
No (more) innovation here. Please move along.
Exactly five years ago, the GoodElectronics Network and SOMO published a paper explaining how Apple is short-changing societies.
Now, in case it matters, personally I have nothing against profit and being rich, in and by themselves. This said, I consider that paper important, recommended reading it whatever one thinks of capitalism.
Why? Because what that paper shows is that, regardless of what it says, what *any tech company like Apple does is not innovation, or at least that real innovation is a minimal part of what it does.
Whatever it was twenty or thirty years ago, the Apple of today is, first and foremost, just a company that makes money with money, to make money with money:
“Apple increasingly operates like a large institutional investor, investing most of its mounting cash pile in financial markets."
That is maybe the most important part of the whole SOMO report. Because it provides more evidence that, albeit Apple may be the most extreme case, potentially all “Big Tech is like Big Banks”.
Who writes this, why, and how to help
I am Marco Fioretti, tech writer and aspiring polymath doing human-digital research and popularization.
I do it because YOUR civil rights and the quality of YOUR life depend every year more on how software is used AROUND you.
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