I think it depends on how wide spread the acts committed were. Was the growth of the Internet and Tech over the last 2 to 3 decades fueled by illegal sex, drugs and money so that power players of all stripes were partying their brains out while pushing technology we didn’t know we needed? Why else has the gap between the haves and the have nots grown so wide than that technological push has allowed it?
What if it were proven that the technology of the Internet (created by companies like Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, Netgear, AMD, Nvidia etc. etc.) was being used to facilitate an unimaginable amount of criminal and/or harmful activity? Drug dealing, Sex trafficking, Assassination, funding of terrorism, Extremist organizing and cooperative effort, corporate fraud, unethical hacking, pirating, spam, not to mention the outsourcing of tech jobs from the US overseas and the loss of jobs due to automation?
At what point (if ever) would it be deemed ethically or morally warranted to take down and dismantle the very things making so much of this misery so much easier to visit on the world? I know Wozniak likened the Internet to the Ocean, saying when pirates terrorized the sea the authorities didn’t drain the Oceans, but the Internet isn’t a natural wonder. It is a Man-made system and as fallible as the humans which made it.
Microsoft is only one company, but by numbers I think it is probably the biggest in terms of overall responsibility for the state of computing as it stands today (maybe?). Epstein aside, there are a lot more problems associated with tech then sex trafficking and I think Gates is more guilty of helping devalue the human component of society in favor of the technological components.
I think it depends on how wide spread the acts committed were. Was the growth of the Internet and Tech over the last 2 to 3 decades fueled by illegal sex, drugs and money so that power players of all stripes were partying their brains out while pushing technology we didn’t know we needed? Why else has the gap between the haves and the have nots grown so wide than that technological push has allowed it?
What if it were proven that the technology of the Internet (created by companies like Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, Netgear, AMD, Nvidia etc. etc.) was being used to facilitate an unimaginable amount of criminal and/or harmful activity? Drug dealing, Sex trafficking, Assassination, funding of terrorism, Extremist organizing and cooperative effort, corporate fraud, unethical hacking, pirating, spam, not to mention the outsourcing of tech jobs from the US overseas and the loss of jobs due to automation?
At what point (if ever) would it be deemed ethically or morally warranted to take down and dismantle the very things making so much of this misery so much easier to visit on the world? I know Wozniak likened the Internet to the Ocean, saying when pirates terrorized the sea the authorities didn’t drain the Oceans, but the Internet isn’t a natural wonder. It is a Man-made system and as fallible as the humans which made it.
Microsoft is only one company, but by numbers I think it is probably the biggest in terms of overall responsibility for the state of computing as it stands today (maybe?). Epstein aside, there are a lot more problems associated with tech then sex trafficking and I think Gates is more guilty of helping devalue the human component of society in favor of the technological components.