What's sad about a lunch pause? Do I need to keep working 8 hours straight?
Or about a car braking automatically? I has saved me twice in four years, I was looking to see if someone was coming from one direction while the guy in front of me braked suddenly. Car stopped before I rear ended the other guy.
I must be missing something...
You could help at least 500 people before going broke!
You attack capitalism in an article about tech, so let's ask how is that your takeaway, then I'll answer.
Consumers don't buy stock, and deifnieltely not enough to influence trillion dollar company valuation, let's begin with that.
I never said they go for "the cheapest option, period". They are willing to spend extra if they get perceived, or real, value, like aestelhetics (your example) , social status (cars for instance) or functionality (iPhone).
I'm very far from libertarian, so let's abstain about speculating about each other's beliefs and let's talk about ideas.
Majaority of people in the world do NOT live in smaller communities, first, and tech only increases choices, second, so even if the first was true it's still an argument in favor of tech. I can get the new York times (or the helsingin sanomat) in the smallest village of Germany, again thanks to technology.
I don't understand the question...
Again, tech doesn't FORCE anything, people choose to fuck customers (and workers) and sometimes happen to use tech as an excuse. You don't need any tech to raise prices or lower wages, and those are some of the biggest problem we have. Whether I use an app or coins to pay for my parking is not the issue.
In a world with lobbyists, monopolies, big corporations donating billions to politicians, a QR code is nowhere near the top of the problem list.
And consumers are quite rational, the go consistently for the cheapest option that fulfills their need. You see it in online services, electronics, flights, etc.
The solution is... more monopolies? Please enlighten me.
Prime video I don't know so well, but YouTube was free without ads in the beginning, for something that is incredibly expensive to run. They had to introduce any monetization or shut down the service. They went with ads because 99% of users prefer that to payment. Later they gave the option to pay to remove the ads, only as an extra, because very few people are ready to do that.
There are some ad-free video platforms out there but they have a tiny fraction of the user base of YouTube. Most people couldn't even name one, let alone considering using it, when YouTube is "free".
I disagree about such a generalization.
There are very few instances where people decide to be dumb and use technology for it but in general my life is much better thanks to technology.
My job exists due to technology, the Internet allows me to work from home, a washing machine washes my clothes, I can order food in the middle of a meeting and have it delivered on my lunch pause, I can speak to my family half a world away everyday, with video, for free, I can have the answer to any question in seconds from my a tiny device in my pocket, my car brakes automatically if I'm distracted (and heats up before I sit down in the morning)... you get the deal.
I feel the same. Find it annoying when in the US the waitress introduces herself, asks where I'm form, etc. Do you work for a diner or the CIA? Just bring me a steak with fries, medium rare, please and thank you.
Yeah plus the transport would be much more expensive. But I guess building your own refineries will give much more flexibility for the future...