#tech-industry-influence

#tech-industry-influence

The Apple II put the small, scrappy upstart company on the map. It was Apple's first mass-market personal computer, designed by Wozniak as a complete, ready-to-use machine rather than a bare circuit board for hobbyists which had been the home-computing norm up to that point. The Apple II combined the electronics, keyboard and power supply in a single case, and could plug straight into a monitor screen, making computing feel far less intimidating.

The US is advancing a new global order. Over the past eight decades Washington pursued when it suited American interests an order based on international law, liberalism, multilateralism and democratic values. The new one is based on autocracy and the use of force, and is underpinned by xenophobic nationalism. For the transatlantic relationship this is transformative: it means that coercive action now drives policy change. Europe's security dependency on the US is leverage to be ruthlessly exploited.

One of the covers for the Time issue is a painting by Jason Seiler that repurposes the iconic 1932 photograph Lunch atop a Skyscraper (whose photographer remains anonymous). The original photo shows a group of ironworkers jauntily eating lunch on a steel beam during the construction of Rockefeller Center, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they are 850 feet above the ground.

"I'm going to lay out a hypothesis about why Trump's suddenly backing away from a crackdown in San Francisco (and possibly the rest of the Bay Area): 1) this place is organized, and 2) the wealthy, powerful people Trump listens to are especially vulnerable to organizing-driven-polarization. Two weeks ago, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff publicly mused that sending the National Guard to SF was a good idea. Now he's privately talking Trump out of it."