Interesting Behavior: Is It a Leitmotif for Big Tech?
October 18, 2021
A leitmotif, if I remember the required music appreciation course in 1962 is a melodic figure that accompanies a person, a situation, or a character like Brünnhilde from a special someone’s favorite composer.
My question this morning on October 18, 2021, is:
“Is there a leitmotif associated with some of the Big Tech “we are not monopolies” outfits?”
You can decide from these three examples or what Stephen Toulmin called “data.” I will provide my own “warrant”, but that’s what the Toulmin’s model says to do.
Here we go. Data:
- The Wall Street Journal asserts that William “Bill” Gates learned from some Softie colleagues suggested Mr. Gates alter his email behavior to a female employee. Correctly or incorrectly, Mr. Gates has been associated with everyone’s favorite academic donor, Jeffrey Epstein, according to the mostly-accurate New York Times.
- Facebook does not agree with a Wall Street Journal report that the company is not doing a Class A job fighting hate speech. See “Facebook Disputes Report That Its AI Can’t Detect Hate Speech or Violence Consistently.”
- The trusty Thomson Reuters reports that “Amazon May Have Lied to Congress, Five US Lawmakers Say.” The operative word is lied; that is, not tell the “truth”, which is, of course, like “is” a word with fluid connotations.
Now the warrant:
With each of the Big Tech “we’re not monopolies” a high-profile individual defends a company’s action or protests that “reality” is different from the shaped information about the individual or the company.
Let’s concede that these are generally negative “data.” What’s interesting is that generally negative and the individuals and their associated organizations are allegedly behaving in a way that troubles some people.
That’s enough Stephen Toulmin for today. Back to Wagner.
Leitmotifs allowed that special someone’s favorite composer to create musical symbols. In that eminently terse and listenable Der Ring des Nibelungen, Wagner delivers dozens of distinct leitmotiv. These are possible used to represent many things.
In our modern Big Tech settings, perhaps the leitmotif is the fruits of no consequences, fancy dancing, and psychobabble.
Warrant? What does that mean? I think it means one thing to Stephen Toulmin and another thing to Stephen E Arnold.
Stephen E Arnold, October 18, 2021
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