serenata-your-neighborhood-lefty:
“Shouldn’t the man who invented the iPhone own his own creation?”
An explanation by anti-capitalist brad pitt.
“Mazzucato lists twelve crucial technologies that make smartphones “smart”: (1) microprocessors;(2) memory chips; (3) solid state hard drives; (4) liquid crystal displays; (5) lithium-based batteries;(6) fast Fourier transform algorithms; (7) the internet; (8) HTTP and HTML protocols; (9) cellular networks; (10) Global Positioning Systems (GPS); (11) touchscreens; and (12) voice recognition. Every last one was supported by the public sector at key stages of development.”
Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski, The People’s Republic of Walmart
“A critical history of technology would show how little any of the inventions [..] are the work of a single individual.”
–Karl Marx, Capital
[Video caption for original post: screenshot of a comment that reads “So you’re saying the man who created the iPhone and made the whole thing possible, shouldn’t own his creation?”
The response by Cody Taffet (@thetranscending) on TikTok, spoken, is as follows.]
I’m not trying to ridicule anybody; I think life is hard enough as it is. But I really want to use this comment as a reference, because this type of ‘great man’ sort of Ayn-Randian idea is really pervasive and insidious.
Y'all - “a man” did not “invent” the iPhone, okay? Smartphone technology is the result of teams of people working together over many decades: liquid crystal technology; transistor technology… all of these technologies that we associate with capitalism and innovation - they were developed in the public sector, mainly by underpaid and overworked researchers funded by public grants.
Lots of these cool technologies that we enjoy are just the result of human beings working together and making cool shit - not “great” ingenious white men who, like, then deserve all the money, or something. So yeah, food for thought.[End caption.]