I might be the only person on Earth feeling sorry for the big boys of technology. Jack Dorsey from Twitter, Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook, all those Google nerds: They're monumentally screwed, because they have no idea how to tame the monsters they have created.
The way I see it, these guys — and they are mostly guys — were arbitrarily chosen. They started with some good ideas, some luck, great timing, got lots of people to believe in their rosy vision, and they won the unicorn lottery. Little did they know or care what problems they were creating. And now, they're being asked to solve — or acknowledge, or something — some really .big issues, such as what to do about people who use their platforms to meddle in elections or spread lies, paranoia, bigotry and straight-up hate.
The world expects great things of them, because they're supposed to be geniuses. Problem is, they're not. There's nothing they can do except apologize, turn off their big machines and walk away. I doubt they'll do that. Instead, they're manufacturing baloney explanations about how they'll use more technology, or maybe more people, to handle the civic duties they had hoped to avoid.
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