L4sBotTech's broken promises: Streaming is now just as expensive and confusing as cable. Ubers cost as much as taxis. And the cloud is no longer cheap
FadesThis has nothing to do with tech and EVERYTHING to do with FUCKING CAPITALISM.
What a dumb fucking post, tech didn’t promise us shit were still living in a capitalist nightmare where quarterly earnings are far and above the primary value, over any and all people.
What the fuck is this waaaa tech didn’t usher in an age of utopia!!! It’s almost like we have to solve other problems first. Fucks sake
“Tech” doesn’t exist. Entire concept is a lie propagated by companies trying to appear like something different. Not a tech company - a taxi company, a short term rental company, a video distribution company …
Look at what they sell, not what tools they use to do it.
sudo“the cloud isn’t tech it’s a rental company” is a pretty dumb take tbh.
Like, if you’re trying to argue that AWS (or gcp, azure) services don’t provide technical solutions that aren’t available otherwise you just don’t know what you’re talking about. Is it expensive, yeah it definitely can be. But cloud is much more than server rentals at this point. Want a host that gives you bare metal? Great there are ‘rentals’ to choose from. I can see arguing SaaS hasn’t really ‘tech’, but PasS and IaaS provide technology and solutions to problems. I hate Daddy Jeff as much as the next guy but AWS is very much ‘tech’.
I could buy a server and run AD. I can rent a cloud server and run AD. In that way, you’re correct.
But what I want to do is buy a local server and run AAD. They won’t let me. Their cloud solutions are an artificial limitation to force us to rent servers rather than license software. It’s another form of vendor lockin.
You gave a good suggestion yourself - PasS and IaaS. Or if that is too specific let’s call it “computing platform provider”.
They sell you tools and services useful for making something else - not a new concept by any means, just a little (or lot) upgraded.
Technologies change, business models not so quickly. The biggest revolution is the massive adoption of subscription model for better or worse.
My (very subjective) perception is of “tech” as a boomer term for the “scary unknown crazy things I don’t understand”
JoeBigelowYou know how to fix air conditioning? How about program an alarm system? These are side services a storage company provides their clients to enhance their main product. If uber is a taxi company and Netflix is just Blockbuster 2.0, the cloud is just a big Westies in the sky.
The cloud is just data server farms with fancy marketing. Shut your pie hole.
but what isn’t tech, then?
yeah, AWS is tech. but the garage down the street is also selling technology. the landscaping company will sell me a cloud-connected sprinker system, are they a tech business?
“tech” is an investment term to refer to businesses that develop technology that has the potential to turn into huge, currently unknowable growth. tech is a good investment because it’s so far ahead of the curve that we don’t even know how it will grow yet. if you’re selling things that are generally well understood and will scale and grow in a predictable fashion, you’re not a tech business. you’re a service business.
Uber isn’t a taxi company. They don’t own a fleet. They’re a company that makes an app.
Um, not sure where you live but in most cities I know taxi companies don’t own the fleet
I guess the thing where tech is relevant is that regulations thought it was different, so they didn’t apply the rules against dumping and other illegal tactics (“because they’re a start-up, it’s different when they lose money year over year”).
I’m not usually one for an ad hominem, but it’s business insider—that’s probably one conclusion they will never arrive at
Ann ArchyNot incapable, unwilling.
Yeah, but “SoCiaLisM”
ChaoticNeutralCzechAgree, it’s 100% greed for investors’ money. But it’s way easier to get away with lying in tech than in most other industries.
Dark ArcIt’s not even that; those services were subsidized by investors money on this idea that once you get a user base, you can then capitalize on the user base.
Those promises were made at a loss which later had to become a profit. It’s like Discord, there’s no way hosting literal hundreds of thousands of servers for free and killing all the competition can and will continue indefinitely. I wouldn’t be surprised if their monetization gets even more aggressive because transmitting all of that audio and video is not cheap.
That’s not even a “capitalism” thing, that’s just a “someone’s got to do the work thing” and the majority of gamers went “yup that somebody can not be free!” And what always happens does, the existing solutions lost tons of revenue and became increasingly stagnant because they can’t compete with “free”.
That’s why I’ve started paying for stuff again. Cheap isn’t cheap when it comes to manufactured goods (i.e., cheap imported junk), and free isn’t free when it comes to online services. Ultimately, somebody’s gotta make “free” happen (even if it’s a government, and then that really means the tax payer).
Can we actually have a discussion on what’s at hand here instead of knee jerk reactions?
Perhaps you had to have been there for all the “building better worlds” and “bringing people together” horseshit ever silicon valley was spewing since the dot com boom in the 2000’s
It’s not an actual promise so don’t act pedantic. The point is- society was sold these concepts and ideas as solutions to existing problems, and they’ve instead become bigger and more expensive problems.
Cheaper has never been a promise of big tech. Better, personalized, more convenient, flexible, faster. Cheaper? I missed the promise where we’d get all these benefits for nothing, and in fact be given discounts for getting all these benefits.
Before anyone starts: yes Uber is better than a taxi. Yes, cloud computing is better than on-premises. I’m so sad for this author who can’t work their streaming services, but as bad as cable? Give me a break.
Yea cable sucked way more, atleast we aren’t locked into contracts with these services. Subscribe for a month watch the last years entire catalog and unsubscribe, rinse and repeat. You don’t need every subscription to be always active.
Yyyyep. The way they package channels is so irritating. And the advertising load you get with cable TV is intolerable to me. My parents are conditioned to it after decades but it drives me insane fast.
That’s why I just bittorrent the fuck out of everything. I’ll never play the game.
For now. Long term contracts are coming to streaming
Haha good luck with forcing people into a contract when you got like 2 shows airing at any given time. If they want a contract the content has to explode by atleast 4 fold
Honestly, not to blame the public, but people were sitting here for the last decade going, don’t like being censored? Don’t use Google/Facebook/whatever. Don’t like being tracked across the internet? Don’t use Google/Facebook/whatever. And everyone kept using it. As for streaming services, I mean, if you don’t want monopolistic pricing power, abolish copyright/DMCA.
dezmdabolish copyright
17 years is enough.
Yeah, but they said those things before going public or when a few people had the vast majority of shares.
If they cash out, there’s now a board in control, and the big investors want big returns. So that’s the direction companies inevitably go.
Because if capitalism.
It might be the same company, but it’s often not the same people calling the shots
NixThey were/are solutions to some of the problems though. Uber makes it way easier and convenient to get a ride which also helped lower the amount of drunk driving happening. Streaming made it was more convenient to watch what i want to watch when i want to watch it and without ads.
The real solution would be for public infrastructure like subways, busses, etc so we dont need privatized solutions that start cheap and then ramp up the prices when we’re hooked. And we could have had films/series that get funded directly by the viewers without middlemen so for a cheaper price we can enjoy the art and have the money go directly to the artists but we instead we got different middlemen
Friendly reminder that Uber makes use of public infrastructure to do its thing.
As do all the airlines.
While a bit effusive, I do think their outburst is still relevant because I feel like it’s a very common one people get when they’re formulating a bit of an epiphany about the world and the relationship between tech and society.
See, we’re used, both in media and in actual examples, to see Tech solve problems. In the 80’s everyone used maps. In the 2010’s, everyone used Google Maps. Tech does effectively to have this power. It can make life easier and it can change people.
So from there comes the expectation. Tech has solved these problems, so SURELY tech will also solve these other ones too right? Using Tech for food delivery and ride-sharing must SURELY be a valid solution.
“I don’t get it, we have the tech already, so why are there still problems?”
And that’s the epiphany:
Tech doesn’t solve people problems.
We cured AIDS, using literally handmade vaccines. And yet Americans are still homophobic.
Technology has and will always be awesome…… unless it’s in a society that is structured in an inherently explorative way.
Did you mean exploitative?
Yup thanks!
Capitalism would never allow utopia to come about, because the concept of utopia doesn’t allow for an unequal distribution of goods. The inequality is very much a feature, not a bug.
Bigger issue is people expecting tech to solve social problems created by social structure. Yes, tech is absolutely failing at this. How could it not?
Why not instead take this show of contempt for tech as another chance for people to recognize the underlying issue, not as a threat to the future of tech developments.