Attention Please!

Relax. I'm not a teacher trying to get the classroom's attention redirected to the subject at hand. No, this short post is about the war for your attention, and how it is responsible for the rise of depression, division and hate.

Tesla isn't the only tech-company that's suffering from a rapid decline in its stock price, having lost some 70 percent over the last year. All of the big tech-companies suffer from essentially the same problem, which is that they're structurally overvalued. That's because they've always ridden the wave of future potential; Uber is a splendid example of this phenomenon, as it has attracted big investments while never having a solid model for profits. Although its ride-sharing concept has been hailed as one of the most revolutionary, transformative and disruptive stories in recent decades, the company operates at a loss of billions of dollars per year. You can read the Yahoo Finance article Uber Technologies Has Strong Growth, but No Profits that this growth will come to a halt because it'll become very hard to attract a new investor base if the company doesn't find a way to generate real profits.

I've often written about how Elon Musk has managed to skyrocket Tesla's stock valuation to the moon by constantly hyping up future potential; how many times has he predicted that full self driving cars will be available next year? The Hyperloop, colonizing Mars within our lifetime (by 2025 or 2030, actually), solar roof-tiles; there's no end to this man's empty promises. Problem is that the valuation of his companies is based on these empty promises and the general public as well as investors are starting to see the game that's being played. Tesla's market cap was at one time as high as all the other major car manufacturers combined, when it produces 1 or 2 percent of all the cars sold. That is because of Elon's antics, but also because Tesla is seen as a tech-company instead of a car manufacturer.

A universal trait of the Big Tech industry is that these companies offer free services; Google is a free search engine, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Tik Tok, Instagram and the likes are all free social platforms, the Uber app is free to use and so on. We all know however that nothing is free, and we pay with our privacy; Big Tech has become the all seeing eye, the grand collector of all our personal data. And in order to ramp up this nefarious business model, they compete for our attention. Their entire strategy hinges on their ability to keep us glued to their sites as often and as long as possible. If you're wondering why adults, but especially children are so damn addicted to their digital screens, look no further than this strategy.

These companies aren't the Great Disruptors they claim to be. Like all other "disruptions" in capitalism they're just inventions to keep us locked up inside the same box, and are sold to us as if they are the result of brilliant out-of-the-box thinking. No, they're just new trinkets to keep the status-quo intact. Elon Musk and his billionaire peers are increasingly exposed as being not so special, not unique or brilliant at all, but rather shrewd business men who buy or steal ideas from others, and then pay real scientists to keep the facade up. Steve Jobs never invented anything, Bill Gates never made MS DOS, Elon Musk never designed a car or a rocket in his life, and Jeff Bezos made the brilliant move of designing an online store. But we've been taught that the best, the brightest and the hardest working individuals rise to the top, so when we see someone reaching the top, we naturally assume that they must be the best, the brightest and the hardest working. That's what I love about the film Glass Onion and its predecessor; they destroy this myth of the Great Men...

Anyway, these tech-companies hire entire armies of psychologists to figure out how to capture and keep our attention, and they found that evoking outrage, anger and fear are most effective at keeping us glued to our digital screens. In order to evoke outrage, hate and anger, adversaries are needed, so the algorithms are programmed to create opposing camps and keep their members locked in their respective camps by creating digital echo-chambers. If you're young, maybe you've got the impression that public- and political discourse has always been this way, but take it from an old geezer like myself that the amount of vitriol and hate has increased exponentially these past few decades. We've come to a point where our attention, decency and sanity are sacrificed on the altar of corporate profits. So, pay attention, please, as this is about to become worse if we're not aware of this dynamic.

Thanks so much for visiting my blog and reading my posts dear reader, I appreciate that a lot :-) If you like my content, please consider leaving a comment, upvote or resteem. I'll be back here tomorrow and sincerely hope you'll join me. Until then, stay safe, stay healthy!