By definition, technology businesses transform the world: as prominent business strategist Peter F Drucker puts it, “Innovate or die!” Technology companies cover a wide range of topics, from social media to software creation, but they all can manage electronic systems or products.
The resources of technology corporations enable many investments in new technologies; companies either invest in or buy out smaller companies to integrate new technical breakthroughs into their corporate ecosystems. To preserve their hegemony, these firms, like any other large corporation, must change the social fabric so that consumers tolerate their conduct.
The social fabric of the globe is divided into three major sectors: politics, economy, and the environment. Politics is concerned with the political bodies of the countries in which these firms operate. Similarly, economics influences optimal financial conditions for businesses to thrive.
The environment is concerned with how firms alter the world’s ecosystems and how the public perceives those ecosystems. The role of technology corporations is to modify the globe and social fabric in order to sustain company profitability.
Tech corporations, particularly social media companies, affect their customers’ political beliefs about the accessibility and inaccessibility of information. Companies like Meta and Twitter, for example, enabled extremist propaganda to thrive on their platforms in the run-up to the 2021 United States Capitol Attack. Without business oversight, misinformation and disinformation ran rampant in Facebook networks.
Malicious actors, such as the Proud Boys, could utilize Facebook’s services to coordinate with radicals in order to plan an attack on the Capitol. Several social media companies stopped former US President Donald Trump from interacting with his online supporters during the incident, which many believe prevented further escalation of violence on Capitol Hill. Social media firms capitalized on the radical connection by allowing bad actors to thrive and grow advertising income.
Nonetheless, when a series of user activities resulted in the attack, social media corporations barred the president from keeping a positive reputation among their users.
Finally, social media firms influence the American social fabric by allowing extremist information on their platforms and barring the president of the United States from speaking on their platforms, proving the power of technology companies in influencing political culture.
Another situation in point is the ongoing Rohingya crisis, in which firms like Facebook have enabled pro-junta and pro-violence content to remain unrestricted on their platform.
According to Amnesty International, Myanmar’s present government is committing ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya population. Despite this, Facebook was originally critical in allowing political actors to promote anti-Rohingya sentiment across their platform with no opposition.
Only after a United Nations report and multiple activists asking for action did Facebook remove abusive pro-government postings. Because of Facebook’s inactivity, additional horrible crimes against the Rohingya people were perpetrated.
According to BuzzFeed News, nearly 12 million people followed 52 Facebook pages before Facebook removed them. The corporation contributed to the deterioration of Myanmar’s civil society and had a severe impact on the country’s social fabric. Facebook continued to profit from the activity generated by the negative political actors’ accounts, but only ceased once negative exposure appeared online.
In contrast to the Rohingya situation, the Arab Spring illustrates that if technology corporations enable website involvement, they can align with democratic goals. In 2011, many political activists in the Middle East used social media to organize their dissatisfaction with autocratic and anocratic governments.
Various civil servants, government officials, and activists praised Facebook’s value in promoting democratic governments, according to Elizabeth Linder, a Facebook Politics and Government Specialist from 2008 to 2016.
Because Facebook and the majority of the public shared a pro-democratic feeling, Facebook permitted this political content to remain on the network.
In contrast to the preceding two examples, technological enterprises not only have a negative impact on civil society; they also transform the world and society anytime their finances suffer. In the case of the Arab Spring, Facebook did not need to act because the status quo was conducive to high user engagement, which delivered money to the corporation. If it does not have a detrimental influence on the companies’ profits, technological companies enable political actors to reshape the world and change the social order of countries.
Technology businesses take advantage of education by providing free technological equipment to schools, thereby increasing brand recognition and interest in technology. Google is one of the corporations that provides laptops to schools across the United States.
According to the New York Times, Google’s low-cost and easily identifiable Chromebook has become a household staple in the United States. Google willingly filled the gap in the market for low-cost laptops. This has had an impact on many American schools because students and teachers now have access to technology that can help pupils learn.
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Finally, because to Google’s invention, it enabled less fortunate school districts to quickly adjust to the new technology world. Overall, Google’s assistance to low-income school districts will improve the social fabric of multiple classrooms.
Nonetheless, Google profited from school Chromebook adoption by allowing kids to engage Google’s Software as a Service ecosystem and establish favorable brand reputation among students across America. If technology partnerships can gain a commercial advantage over competitors, they can change the world and promote social good.
The work-from-home movement highlights the inconsistency of technology businesses in changing and transforming the economic life of users versus employees. Since the CoVid-19 epidemic, many employees have decided to work from home rather than in an office. According to the Pew Research Center, 61% of workers with work-at-home employment prefer working from home in the foreseeable future in January 2022.
Working from home has become more manageable because to technology such as Zoom and Skype. Nonetheless, tech giants such as Apple would prefer that, despite technological advancements that allow for at-home working, people return to the office.
This indicates that the power of technological enterprises to influence the world extends not just to changing the status quo but also to returning to it. Furthermore, this schism demonstrates the limitations of firms’ ability to change the social fabric of their employees. This disparity demonstrates that, while technology businesses can alter economic factors such as brand awareness, labor demands remain severe and difficult to regulate.
The rise of cryptocurrency reveals IT corporations’ disdain for the environment in exchange for profit. As the popularity of cryptocurrencies grows, so does the ability of technology businesses to greatly enhance the welfare of the environment.
According to The Balance, the manufacturing of Bitcoin, a prominent cryptocurrency, consumes around 70.36 teraWatts of energy–equivalent to the energy consumption of the Czech Republic. This energy consumption is frequently powered by carbon-intensive sources, most notably coal.
Technology businesses that promote cryptocurrency manufacturing have a negative impact on the planet by contributing to the disastrous repercussions of climate change. While the general public’s short-term social fabric may regard cryptocurrencies as niche, the world’s long-term social fabric becomes less stable.
Despite the unfavorable externality, the short-term profit from Bitcoin allows cryptocurrency-focused businesses to remain profitable while reaping the benefits of cryptocurrencies’ present market value.
The electric-car sector exemplifies the impact of “green-washing” on consumers as well as the desire of environmentally conscientious companies to severely harm the environment. Electric vehicles emit less carbon dioxide and so cause less environmental impact than gasoline-powered vehicles. Nonetheless, electric vehicles require a significant amount of energy to manufacture and maintain.
Technology and car corporations “greenwash” the manufacturing of environmentally hazardous technologies to appear more tangible to consumers. This changes the social fabric of automobile buyers since electronic car customers may assume they are helping to alleviate the climate catastrophe.
However, technology corporations are negatively impacting the global climate. Similarly to political and economic factors, technology businesses will prioritize the environment only if it permits them to remain profitable.
Finally, the function of technology corporations in the modern world is upon changing the globe’s political, economic, and environmental factors in order to profit. Any company’s goal is to stay in business, but tech corporations, particularly large ones, wield enormous power in order to maintain their hegemonic positions.
The influence of social media firms on political discourse enables them to manipulate people’s political allegiances and sow political discord. Nonetheless, the social culture of technology businesses discourages heinous behavior for fear of external and internal repercussions. In order to assure future tech workers and earnings, technology corporations build strong brand images.
Furthermore, reliance on technology offers technology companies an advantage in contract negotiations. Finally, technology businesses “greenwash” their behavior in order to look environmentally conscious to the broader public while continuing to participate in technology that carelessly harms the environment.
Companies in the technology industry are neither moral nor immoral: they are amoral. The ability of these enterprises to remain competitive determines whether their technical creations affect the world for the better or for the worse for society. No one should imagine that technology businesses can develop outside of the realities of business.
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