Little Tech is Coming for Workers

We are currently experiencing a tech boom many say can only be matched by the original dotcom boom of the late ‘90s that gave rise to Big Tech.1 Whether in the workplace, job markets, education, health, housing, or financial services, privatized tech products are proliferating at a speed unlike what we’ve seen before, turning these issue areas into unregulated markets that further a privatization agenda. While society is still grappling with the social, political, and economic implications of the emergence of Big Tech, our current tech boom is giving birth to a new generation of technology companies that undermine and skirt laws, and are not transparent about the data they collect or how they profit from it. Meanwhile, there is a lack of due diligence of tech products being conducted at every step of the process, from investors, to tech companies, to the customers in the public and private sectors that purchase them. While we still
need to address the challenges posed by Big Tech companies (notably Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Apple), we increasingly also need to future-proof our strategies and interventions with emerging companies.