Apple Legend Woz Says Tech Companies Are Too Big & Too Political Today

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Final Up to date on: sixth March 2025, 05:51 pm

Talking at a tech convention in Barcelona this week, Cellular World Congress, Apple legend Steve Wozniak (Woz) made some fascinating feedback on the tech business in the present day. Nicely, the important thing factors are proper there within the headlines — tech corporations have gotten too large, and now they’re getting too political. They’re more and more controlling our particular person lives, and now they’re additionally taking management of our politics and insurance policies. After all, I believe the latter is essentially a US-centric perspective, as tech corporations don’t appear to have practically the direct political energy elsewhere that they’ve within the US.

“Technology companies are huge, and as they’re huge and worth that much money, they have to have some political involvement,” Woz realistically notedwhereas referencing the longstanding position of lobbying in politics. “But actually taking a direct role… just because they’ve made it big in technology, I don’t like that at all,” he added.

Elon Musk is clearly the obvious tech billionaire who has someway virtually turn into the shadow president — and one going far past constitutional government powers. However there’s additionally Peter Thiel, who has arguably been not less than as influential, in addition to Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, David Sachs, and others.

Woz’s remarks ring true, and highly effective. Why ought to tech billionaires have the ability to insert a lot direct political energy over Individuals? Why ought to tech nerds who turned among the richest folks on the planet as a result of they created fashionable know-how platforms have management over our Social Safety, Medicare, Division of Training, Division of Power, the IRS, USAID, the EPA, and worldwide conflicts? How have they been educated and geared up to cope with issues far outdoors their fields of experience? Woz is aware of this group and is anxious, and I believe all of us needs to be.

“I think that the skills of politics are very different than the skills for technology companies to have success… it doesn’t make sense to run a government like a business,” Wozniak famous. That is one thing that those that have been educated and skilled in political and social issues know properly, however it’s one thing tech firm billionaires don’t appear to know. They like leaping to the conclusion that they need to make all the selections as a result of they’d a money-making concept or two and wrote efficient code.

“All the Big Tech companies are just so big. It’s like they’re running our lives,” Woz added.

He additionally particularly addressed Elon Musk’s dictatorial and undemocratic approach of doing issues. “When you run a business, you look around and you look for a consensus … you negotiate, you compromise. I don’t see that happening in the case of Elon Musk. … You don’t just say everything is out and start fresh,” Woz commented. Nicely, maybe that concept of the best way to run a enterprise is how Woz helped accomplish that at Apple, or skilled issues at Apple. Maybe that was even partly how Elon Musk’s corporations had been run one or 20 years in the past. Nonetheless, quite a few tales have proven that Musk has no tolerance for concepts against his, for individuals who don’t do precisely what he desires, and for working with staff who don’t agree with just about every little thing he says. And we’re additionally seeing that dictatorial nature in his political involvement, together with huge leaping to conclusions, false assumptions, and US and world hurt.

Whereas I’m typically not a fan of getting tech billionaires operating the present politically, if there was one I’d put some belief in, it’d in all probability be Woz. He appears to be abnormally all the way down to earth, wise, humble, and understanding of the explanations we’ve democracy — in comparison with different tech goliaths. After all, he acknowledges there are higher folks for the job, and Elon Musk isn’t one in every of them.

(Paradoxically, Elon Musk doesn’t even appear to be serving to or have affect over the 2 issues he is aware of loads about — electrical autos and the grid.)

Featured photo by Nichollas Harrison (CC BY-SA 2.0)