a digital economy and world that work for the 99% are one where is is one
where technologies don't support the interests of some at the cost of others
there's sort of a zero-sum mentality that can end up costing all of us
actually at the end of the day a digital economy produces prosperity and value
for all it does support business interests it does support you know the
great developments for consumers that a lot of digital platforms have provided
but that doesn't come at the cost of economic security of worker security
diverse opinions of racial minorities of indigenous peoples of women the issue is
that right now our digital world through the technologies that have
globalized to the world are more or less structured influenced and dominated by a
few technology companies that are located in a small sliver of the world
in Silicon Valley in Seattle and also actually in China right and they all
have different kind of outcomes but the people who are leading these companies
not only are they supposed to develop technologies for their private interest
nevermind the effects on the rest of us but they tend to be in terms of
demographics not representative of the vast majority of their users we don't
see many women we don't see many racial minorities we do see some Asian and
white males and so as a result intentionally or not they are coding
into the digital world outcomes that are generative of greater inequality and
it's really important to just situate this on top of what our world looks like
right now and even our country looks like three people or so with equivalent
wealth to 195 million in this country who ever would have imagined that that
all has happened in the past few decades globally seven or eight people depending
on what estimates you look at with equivalent wealth
3.9 to 4 billion people approximately these are different estimates on this
that wasn't even created by the internet and digital technology but the Internet
and digital technology are amplifying these problems so what can we do about
these inequalities that we face right now on the one hand we can see these
inequalities as reasons to be upset concerned anxious nervous and critical
and that's fine I understand where that comes from but to me they represent
alternatives and opportunities for us to actually engage in productive
progressive pragmatic action so first of all every single person who is in danger
of losing their job losing their economic security which is already
happening needs to be acknowledged addressed and humanized not just through
lip service but by actually presenting economic opportunities for those people
so in other words what I'm getting at on the economic level our jobs that are
shifting to the gig economy right like uber drivers and so on that many sort of
studies are showing are likely the Gateway to an automated world those
people need to be protected they either need to be presented with new types of
jobs that are just that are dignified they're economically secure or we need
to figure out other outcomes like imagine if uber was at least partially
if not completely owned or an uber type model by its drivers by its laborers the
entire model of Technology corporations right now is to make labor and costs of
all forms and afterthought to basically disregard those sorts of costs to
maximize profit and valuation and that's a very toxic model on a social level so
that's one that's on the economic level politically there's no question in my
mind's that what we need are not just independent auditors we have to not just
say independent we have to actually make transparent who these journalists are
that are actually in charge of these algorithmic systems that people
basically use to access news for example on facebook right so we
should actually bring reputable journalists across the political
spectrum to actually design these algorithms and audit these algorithms
with engineers so there has to be public-private partnerships that's the
only way it's not going to turn into a complete implosion for Facebook for
example which is getting so much criticism right now but this is
symptomatic of a larger problem and an opportunity for us to actually develop
real solutions to these issues so that's the second issue on the political and
democratic level I think a third element which is both economic and political is
the question of making sure that we support small businesses in the digital
economy and even alternative technology platforms to create a more competitive
environment that's gonna allow what we see now which is horizontal integration
across the board monopolistic tech behavior by Facebook but also Google
Amazon and so on to actually be stemmed a little bit you know don't claim the
language of a marketplace without actually supporting an open marketplace
but an open marketplace just like free speech doesn't mean that it's just
presumed everybody has to have an equal opportunity to participate in these
shifts and then the last point I want to make which I think is very important is
that vulnerable people and vulnerable communities in our world who have been
historically discriminated against need to be first and foremost part of these
solutions part of what you know part of where we go and what we consider moving
forward workers should have power over designing platforms that define the
future of work black and brown communities including like black lives
matter type communities that are victims of a ice algorithmic systems that were
that are turning out to be racist across the board whether it's predictive
policing or courtroom algorithmic systems they should be designing those
systems or even making decisions whether those systems should exist so what I'm
getting at is we have to completely open up the pallet socially politically and
culturally over who has power and governance over technologies that can
coexist with Silicon Valley that can coexist with Amazon but it's
not this blindness what has basically happened is we've all become more or
less blind lemmings in the socially engineered game that is now disrupting
in a very negative way all of our lives and that's why we have to do something
about it right now