Reflections on Big Tech

Summary

Reflections on Big Tech 07 Oct 2025 TL;DR: Big Tech isn’t inherently evil, but we’ve ceded too much control. It’s time to take it back. I have spent many years in technology. For background, I studied computer networks and distributed systems at university, worked as a sysadmin, SRE, and software engineer at a few companies, and then started Micro as an open source project in 2015. But like most of you, I was born into the era of consumer technology, with Ataris, Amstrads, Sega Mega Drives, and everything that came after. I loved computers, but I was never a child programmer like many profess to be. I was a heavy user, but also a physical builder. I liked assembling PCs from the ground up: choosing the right case and motherboard, assembling the parts, and applying the layer of thermal paste to the CPU before resting the heatsink on it. For a period, it was my true passion. Then I learned to program, and that took over. To me, there was a sort of remarkable nature to software, an almost living-like experience—the idea that we could make it do things and that it could continue to operate while we were asleep. I was enthralled by this idea of building living software. And today, obviously, we are getting much closer to that with Agents and the whole pursuit of AGI. But I think what’s more interesting is when you zoom out and try to understand it from the perspective of nature and living, breathing systems like trees, or our universe. The reality is, the living, breathing system—the organic matter—is actually something larger and more complex. It’s not a singular piece of software; it’s a whole host of systems all working together to create the semblance of life. The human body is probably the best representation of that. In our profession, though, I’d argue Google as an entity is the living, breathing embodiment of a software machine interwoven with human agents. What am I trying to say here? It was inevitable that if all the variables at play to create a huge software...