(Photo credit @angelvela)
Next week, my taxes are due. <insert obligatory groan> And yes, I waited until the last minute to do them and yes, I will gripe about how much money I pay in taxes when I see the final numbers. I know that government is a construct that provides enormous benefits to my community using the taxes that I pay into the system. I am proud to support that system and by extension, our democracy, through all of its ups and downs. You might be wondering what the connection to tech is -- and that’s what tech often forgets too.
#techtopic
The tech industry as we know it was born out of government programs & policies like DARPA and Section 230. A 1963 DARPA memo helped bring about the modern internet. And Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 helped set the stage for companies like Google & Facebook to flourish. It’s crucial to understand section 230 as it helps to explain why many of the tech giants exist in their current form, and what drives them to do odd moves like merging Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook together on the same back-end platform. And then when 45 wades into this with an ill-conceived executive order, it causes more confusion about the rights granted to tech companies by section 230.
Tech is also challenged by government regulators around antitrust allegations due to their outsized market power, and the CEOs of 4 tech giants will be testifying in front of Congress in late July. Some argue that if tech companies are broken up, we will lose our competitiveness with China; others argue that we will only remain competitive with China if we break up the big tech companies to allow smaller/more innovative companies to flourish. Companies in regulated industries also believe their ability to compete is curtailed when tech has “no regulations to worry about.” What’s interesting is that none of this public discourse seems to have affected the stock prices for these tech giants -- they are leading a stock market recovery. Not sure if that shows a lack of confidence in our government regulators or a display of confidence in tech’s outlook -- or both.
#nerdcool
Physicists Discover Exotic, New 'Tetraquark' Particle We've Never Seen Before
Fun fact: I’ve been inside the Large Haldron Collider at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland. A PhD friend gave us a tour right before it became fully operational in late 2009.
