Outfits Which Are Big Tech under Fire
September 19, 2015
I am puzzled because I came across a New York Times article dated September 19, 2015, which in Harrod’s Creek is a Saturday. The write up is labeled “Sunday Review” and sports this title: “Big Tech Has Become Way Too Powerful.” I like the “way too” touch. Not just powerful, really powerful, gentle reader. When you click the link, you may encounter a “pay for access” or “access denied” message. Hey, that’s one more example of our modern world. Tough luck for some.
The write up makes the point that some outfits like some addled high tech companies offering products “everyone else has to use.” Yep, digital services coalesce into natural monocultures and monopolies in my experience.
The write up reveals that most online traffic goes to a small percentage of online sites. Yikes, Zipf’s Law has been discovered by the Gray Lady. Not a moment to soon for Benford either.
The problem is that equality is not part of the equation. Just ask a small business about its findability and Web site traffic.
The write up reaches back into America’s past for evidence of the consequences of business concentration:
“The enterprises of the country are aggregating vast corporate combinations of unexampled capital, boldly marching, not for economical conquests only, but for political power,” warned Edward G. Ryan, the chief justice of Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, in 1873. Antitrust law was viewed as a means of breaking this link. “If we will not endure a king as a political power,” Senator John Sherman of Ohio thundered, “we should not endure a king over the production, transportation and sale” of what the nation produced.
The only hitch in the git along is that once digital concentration occurs, the mass of traffic (expressed in different ways) works just like one of those NASA confections showing black holes eating stuff to become bigger. The idea is that the black hole allows nothing to escape its maw.
After reading the write up, I formulated three observations:
- In the short term, I don’t see the black holes of Facebook, Google, and other traffic dominant firms becoming the equivalent of friendly forest creatures in a Bambiesque world.
- Users are voting with their behavior. Billions of folks are perfectly happy with concentration. Go with the flow. There must be broader forces at work than concerns about tracking, equality, and features.
- Regulatory entities are chasing a train which has left the station. By the time, someone discovers Zipf’s Law (maybe the New York Times), other developments are afoot. The time lag makes complaints an academic exercise.
In short, the Gray Lady is taking yet another whack at digital outfits which have supplanted the newspapers perceived right to control certain types of information and advertising.
Nice try. Too late. Facebook and Google may run out of gas sooner rather than later. Their problems will have little to do with traditional publishing. Energy can dissipate. Grousing seems to be more persistent.
By the way, clear time stamps are helpful. Gentle reader, pass this thought along if you come across a “real” journalist. Today is Saturday, not Sunday. Today’s reality is not what will eventually be.
Reality is annoying. Zipf died in 1950. The Zipfian distribution lives on in certain data behaviors. Those log log graphs are indeed useful.
Stephen E Arnold, September 19, 2015
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