Prompt me!

Everyone keeps talking about how we’re entering the age of “AI.” Here’s the thing: we’ve been using AI for years. We just didn’t call it that. We called it Spell Check. Remember Clippy? That annoying paperclip in Microsoft Office that would pop up asking “It looks like you’re writing a letter. Would you like help?” That was AI too—pattern recognition trying to anticipate what you were doing and offer assistance. We hated it then, but the concept was the same as what we’re using today. The difference now? We can actually have a conversation with it, ask it questions, and get a correct answer—most of the time. AI has suggested people eat rocks for mineral content and use glue to make pizza cheese stick better. Common sense still needs to be applied when using a chatbot, just like we’ve always had to do with information found on the internet via a web browser.

But did anyone actually ask for this? Was there some groundswell of demand for conversational AI, or did a group of engineers just think it would be cool and start building it as a project? Is the pattern repeating itself? The Department of Defense needed a computer network that could survive a nuclear attack—they created ARPANET, which evolved into the foundation of our entire digital society. Engineers at research labs were solving specific technical problems—and now we have “AI” chatbots on our phones. It’s worth asking, because this pattern—technology nobody explicitly requested becoming something we can’t live without—defines the entire history of big tech. Or is it just capitalism “wanting” a new product to sell?

The Pandemic Proof

We couldn’t have survived the first few years of the COVID-19 pandemic without big tech. Think about it:

Zoom kept businesses running and families connected
Google powered remote work through email, docs, and collaboration tools
Microsoft enabled the massive shift to cloud-based operations

Speaking of “the cloud”—let’s clear something up: it’s just someone else’s computer connected to a large network. That’s it. The mystique around cloud computing often obscures this simple reality. When your company “moved to the cloud” during the pandemic, they simply started renting computing power and storage from massive data centers owned by Amazon, Microsoft, or Google instead of maintaining their own servers.

The Love-Hate Relationship

We say we don’t want iMessage, Facebook, and Instagram—all big tech companies. Yet we keep using them. Which ones are the good guys? Which are the bad ones?

Do We Really Need Big Tech?

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: at this point, we almost do. Big tech has woven itself so deeply into the fabric of our daily lives that untangling would be extraordinarily difficult. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t question it.

The root of the issue—why most people have such deep reservations about big tech—comes down to one simple principle: If the product is free, you are the product.

Think about it. Facebook is free. Instagram is free. Gmail is free. Google Search is free. How do these multi-billion dollar companies make their money? By collecting your data, analyzing your behavior, and selling access to you through targeted advertising. Your information gets packaged, sold off, and used in ways you may not approve of—and often in ways you’re not even aware of.

Every search query. Every photo you upload. Every message you send. Every “like” you click. Every website you visit. It all gets collected, analyzed, and monetized. You’re not the customer—you’re the inventory. The advertisers are the customers.

This data collection extends far beyond simple advertising. It shapes what information you see, influences your opinions, and creates detailed profiles of your behavior, preferences, and even your psychological vulnerabilities. Some of this data has been used to target vulnerable individuals and feed addiction-like behavior patterns—especially in young people. There are concerns it could even be used to influence elections, though the full extent of that impact remains debated.

The question isn’t just “do we need big tech?” It’s “do we need big tech as it currently operates?” And that’s where the conversation gets interesting.

The Apple Security Question

Is Apple just using marketing magic to convince us they’re safer when they’re really not? According to security expert Steve Gibson from Security Now Episode 1044, Apple is genuinely secure—but perhaps to an extreme degree.

In his analysis, Gibson acknowledges that “Apple has a huge advantage over Google and Samsung with Android because they control all of their systems’ hardware, its OS and much of their devices’ supporting applications.” However, he notes that Apple “has become somewhat like Ahab with the White Whale in its obsession” over security flaws, stating: “On the one hand, I salute them for taking this stand and for really really saying ‘NO!’ to any intrusion into their system, whether it be great or small; but my lord has this been done at great expense.”

Gibson emphasizes that achieving this level of security requires constant maintenance and evolution, describing it as work that “never will be” finished. He questions whether “the actual cost of absolutely and utterly hardening a powerful and deeply connected consumer computing product…goes way past the point of diminishing returns.” (Source: Security Now #1044 Show Notes)

So yes, Apple really is secure—but whether that extreme investment makes economic sense is another question entirely.

The Forgotten Heroes: Open Source Developers

Here’s where big tech could do much better: supporting the people who create the open source software that powers everything.

Take curl, for example. This software library, created and maintained primarily by one person—Daniel Stenberg—is installed on an estimated six billion devices worldwide. Let that sink in. Six billion installations. It’s in your phone, your TV, your gaming console, your car’s infotainment system.

As Stenberg himself wrote: “At an estimated six billion installations world wide, we can safely say that curl is the most widely used internet transfer library in the world.” He’s worked on this project for over twenty years, often on his own time, giving it away for free because he wanted to “give back” to the open source world.

Stenberg notes that “curl is free but my time is not” and has to charge companies for support to put food on the table. Meanwhile, massive corporations worth trillions of dollars rely on his work daily without contributing proportionally to its maintenance and development.

The Funding Gap

It’s the big companies with venture capital funding that use open source software to get their products to work. Some projects do get funding—but it’s never nearly enough. The asymmetry is staggering: billion-dollar companies build their empires on the backs of software maintained by individuals or small teams working for free or minimal compensation.

This isn’t sustainable, and it’s not fair. Big tech has the resources to properly fund the open source ecosystem they depend on. The question is whether they’ll step up before critical infrastructure starts to crumble.

The Bottom Line

We wouldn’t be where we are today without big tech. The pandemic proved that beyond doubt. But we’ve reached a critical juncture where we need to ask harder questions about the relationship.

Yes, big tech provided essential services when we needed them most. But they did so while monetizing every click, every video call, every document we created. The infrastructure we’ve come to depend on was built on a business model that treats users as products to be analyzed and sold.

With great power comes great responsibility—and big tech has multiple responsibilities that remain unfulfilled:

To users: Being transparent about data collection and giving people real control over their information
To society: Acknowledging the societal impact of surveillance capitalism and addiction-driven design
To the open source community: Properly funding and supporting the developers whose free work enables billion-dollar empires

Do we really need big tech? At this point, we’re so dependent that the answer is almost yes. But we don’t need big tech as it currently operates. We need a version that respects user privacy, funds its infrastructure properly, and doesn’t treat every human interaction as a data point to be harvested and monetized.

As we move forward into an AI-driven future built on decades of accumulated software infrastructure, we need to ensure both that the people maintaining that foundation receive the support they deserve, and that the companies profiting from our data are held accountable. Otherwise, we’re building skyscrapers on foundations held together by the goodwill of volunteers while the penthouse residents sell tickets to watch us through the windows—and that’s a reality none of us should be comfortable accepting.