“This is a power we’ve never seen before in the world … someone with an algorithm that reaches into 2 billion people’s brains at the same time and is the platform for most political discussion for most people, makes the Carnegies and the Rockefellers look impotent by comparison.”

Anand Giridharades, author, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World

The Internet has changed the lives of four billion people on the planet in profound ways; but not as we may have hoped. Power and wealth are becoming more concentrated at the very top; traditional jobs are being decimated; people’s online and offline privacy has been invaded and abused; and elite global and business leaders seem tone deaf to the growing concerns about the future of work and civil society.

In this podcast, LittleFish presenter, Sandy Plunkett and global experts in computing, social science; economics and venture capital explore the implications of a system gone wrong and ask, what’s next for the Internet; for the handful of giants that control it; and for we LittleFish who can’t seem to live with or without it.

Featured Experts in this podcast:

• Genevieve Bell; Futurist, Anthropologist and Intel Corporation Fellow

“Part of the reason I came back from Silicon Valley to Australia is that I was really interested in the notion of how do you build different kinds of futures.”

• Anand Giridharades, author, Winners take All: The elite charade of changing the world

“I think the the answer to a winners take all world is for winners to take less and the only way to do that, is not by asking Mark Zuckerberg to be a nicer guy. It’s politics.”

• Jaron Lanier, Internet pioneer, computer scientist and author, Who Owns the Future?

“The problem with the way we are creating success, is that we create it by pretending all the people who do the work don’t exist and we concentrate the benefits around who has the most central computer.”

• Duncan Davidson; Silicon Valley venture capitalist and entrepreneur

“The corrupting part is they cheat... a lot of the clicks on Facebook or Google are fake clicks attributed as a real click …and so they are overcharging the advertiser maybe by 2X in order to make their business model work.”

References and Credits:

LittleFish would like to specially acknowledge and thank:

• Anand Giridharades, author Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World
• Christiane Amanpour, CNN: Interview “It’s Time to Cancel Davos” with Anand Giridharades; January 21, 2019
  • https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2019/01/21/anand-giridharadas-amanpour.cnn
• Rutger Bregman, Economic historian and author; World Economic Forum 2019 panel on Inequality hosted by Time Magazine
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG0w2rTKE2w
• Jaron Lanier, computer scientist and author: Who Owns the Future?
• Steve Paikin, The Agenda on Canada’s TVO; interview with Jaron Lanier; July 12, 2013
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdEuII9cv-U
• Australian Broadcasting Corporation; Boyer Lecture Series Oct 2017; Fast, Smart & Connected – What it means to be human and Australian in a digital world with Boyer Lecturer Genevieve Bell - Futurist and Anthropologist
  • https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/boyerlectures/series/2017-boyer-lectures/8869370