All five largest world companies are data-extractive tech giants

Evidence

At the time of our writing, the five largest companies in the world are each valued at more than two trillion U.S. dollars. All five of these are technology companies (Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet [i.e., Google], and Amazon), and four of the five have billions of customers who use their products more or less continuously, and whose data-commodification constitutes a central business operation. The fifth makes the chips that power the processing and manipulation of that data, increasingly by means of algorithmic AI. The point of all of this, of course, is making money. This Big Tech nexus makes use of its inescapable digital platforms to collect information about us—our clicks and keystrokes, our blinks and grimaces, our reactions and distractions, our typos and our personality types—and then feeds these data into immensely powerful predictive technologies. The presumed tastes and tendencies of our future selves are then sold to the highest bidder. All of this happens out of sight. It never stops. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 86

Categorization

• QUESTION: At the time of writing’ is vague — is this 2023-2024 data, and does it hold now that market valuations shift? Worth verifying.
• SHARE: The finding that all five trillion-dollar giants are tech companies with continuous user-engagement is the kind of stat worth sending to someone tracking platform concentration.