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- [00:00]
Nicole Turner Lee
You're listening to TechTank, a biweekly podcast from the Brookings Institution exploring the most consequential technology issues of our time. From racial bias and algorithms to the future of work, TechTank takes big ideas and makes them accessible. Welcome to the tech tank podcast. I am co host Nicole Turner Lee, the director of the center for technology Innovation and the founder of the AI equity lab and the publisher of the Tech Tank blog at the Brookings Institution. Today's episode. We're going to talk about big tech companies.
- [00:40]
Tim Wu
Yeah.
- [00:40]
Nicole Turner Lee
Who doesn't talk about big tech companies today? Well, we're going to do it again for those of you who are not tired of hearing us talk about big tech companies. Big technology companies have consolidated immense and economic and cultural power, accounting for 80% of U. S stock gains this year. Year. Their platform shape how people communicate, access information and participate in democracy in the private and public spheres. I mean, come on. Private platforms are increasingly acting as gatekeepers for online speech, while policymakers like myself and courts, which are way above my pay grade, debate how first amendment principles apply to content moderation. At the same time, consolidation across the tech industry has concentrated unprecedented influence and a small group of companies that now dominate digital advertising, search engines, cloud services and data infrastructure. You know, there's a lot going on here with regards to tech companies. My colleague Daryl west and I just generated a paper on data centers. But today we want to talk a little bit about platforms. And I'm really excited to be joined by someone that I know I've been a fan of and watched his work over the years since I've been in tech policy for the last 30 plus, and that is Tim Woo. Tim is a Julius Silver professor of law, science and technology at Columbia Law school. He's here to discuss his new book, the age of extraction, How Tech Platforms conquered the economy and threaten our future prosperity, which is now available at a bookstore near you. Now, Tim served as a special assistant to president Biden for technology and competition policy from 2021 to 2023. I believe that was the second time Tim was in the White House and he's a leading scholar on antitrust and tech regulation and the author of other influential books on the attention economy and corporate power, including the Curse of Bigness, Antitrust and the New Gilded age, and the attention Merchants, the epic scramble to get inside our heads. Wow. Yeah, we're gonna talk about that today. Who's getting inside our heads? Hey, Tim, thanks for joining me today.
- [02:51]
Tim Wu
Great to be here.
- [02:53]
Nicole Turner Lee
You know, I gave a brief, brief Overview of how platform consolidation and digital monopolies are shaping today's economy. And you know, it's something I think you do very well in the book. But I want to give you a chance to sort of justify why you get to write on this topic. Right. You've been studying this dynamic for years. I mean, what drove you to write this book now? Because, you know, you're in the middle of stuff, my friend.
- [03:16]
Tim Wu
Yeah, it's a good question, I guess. This book, I wrote it because I lived through it. I think, I think I was one of these people and there were a lot of us who were just incredibly optimistic about the early Internet and what it was going to do for everybody. You know, it was going to make us all rich, it was going to bring democracy to every country on earth, it was going to improve government, it was going to, you know, give every creative person a space to reach an audience. It was an era of great optimism. I guess I'm Talking about the 90s, early thousands.
- [03:49]
Nicole Turner Lee
Exactly.
- [03:51]
Tim Wu
And I kind of wanted to know what happened. So this book is kind of the story of the last, you know, 20 years or so, maybe 25 years of the dream of the Internet and then kind of what happened to, to wreck it essentially.
- [04:07]
Nicole Turner Lee
So what's so interesting about that? And you know, I have a, an idea too, and I'd love to talk about you because I, I consider us to be the early OGs, Tim. Right. People who really started to look at the commercial Internet in its earliest form. You know, myself on the digital divide side, of course. But you know, looking back, what lessons do you think we missed in sort of that conceptualization of the open Internet to get to this period of data extraction or really the apt title of your book, the Age of Extraction?
- [04:37]
Tim Wu
Yeah, that's a good question. I think I would talk about two things from that early optimistic age. So thing number one was this great faith or trust in the individual founders of the Internet, like the Google guys or, you know, even Jeff Bezos, some sense that their motives were kind of uncommercial or somehow very open ended and that, you know, that they wanted everybody to be rich as much as they wanted themselves to be rich. In other words, like, I think that was one kind of big mistake. So a lot of my most idealistic friends, for example, went to work at Google or Facebook and when I think about it now, you know, maybe they should have been starting a non profit version of those things or something. And so that's one, I think another thing, this is slightly more academic point It's a little to the digital divide is we had this idea that platforms are going to stay open forever. And I think because the Internet was industry was itself an open platform and it was built on the web, we didn't realize the growing power of the main platforms. And here what I mean is Google, Amazon, Facebook, so forth. There was a misunderstanding of scale and platform power. And one of the sort of academic points my book is we really need to understand platform power better and talk
- [06:13]
Nicole Turner Lee
to us a little bit about platform power because I think it's so interesting in the book and I had the opportunity to read it myself. So thank you for this contribution. You talk about this shift of the Internet and then you sort of look at platforms as. I'm trying to think of the way to talk about it. But it's almost like how fungus grows, right? Or like this other life that sort of takes over the Internet, which is so interesting. Right? Because in the history of industrial policy, the Internet has always sort of been cleaved to all of its byproducts. And in this case, you sort of talk about this outgrowth which has its own ecosystem, first defined for people how you're looking at a platform. So what is it? Right, for those people who want to know first and then I want you to talk a little bit about, you know, how they affect the competition that we saw on the Internet as well as, you know, cultivate these dependencies that we see now.
- [07:05]
Tim Wu
Yeah, those are. Those are big questions. So I guess most of us, we think about a normal business. You think of it a business that either, you know, sells something or provides a service or produces something, you know, maybe like a shoemaker or a shoe store or I don't know, those are kind of normal. Or hair salon or something. A platform is a different kind of business because it hosts the behavior or the conduct of others. You know, it is like the stock market is a platform business in the old days operated by the city. Like a city marketplace is a platform kind of business. And, you know, it's kind of a weird. It's a different kind of business. It brings together buyers and sellers. And it has traditionally or, you know, for most of civilization actually been more or less a public function, something done by the government mainly or space provided by the government. And I think what we never really realized in the early Internet days, and we maybe should have, but I think we had a regulated telecom network and we had Microsoft that had just been beaten up by the Justice Department, didn't fully realize how dangerous and important the Power of the platforms would become.
- [08:27]
Nicole Turner Lee
Yeah, and I mean, when I think about it, and I want people to understand this, you don't just talk about the social media platforms. In the book, you talk about these marketplaces like Amazon and others that sort of capitalize off of data and you know, okay, I want to push this a little bit. Right. You talk about exchange, right, the transactional capacity of exchange that sort of lightens the load for others. Talk a little bit about that codependency that comes alongs of platforms.
- [08:54]
Tim Wu
Yeah, no, it's a good way of putting it. So platforms are essential to actually, frankly, any kind of commerce. I mean, every country, every civilization has centralized some kind of platform. You know, in the book I talk about the ancient. You know, Greece has. In the center of every city or they have. In the center of every city is a big giant square where everybody buys and sells and also give. People give speeches and you know, so there's always been these platforms and they've always been really important, but they have a particular power. I mean, once someplace is the place where everyone buys and sells, it's very hard to go to alternatives. This is something you've seen with the Amazon marketplace. You know, Amazon sellers, it's gotten harder and harder and harder to business on Amazon or make any money. It's mainly Chinese sellers who are really able to make money. Some Americans, because they just keep changing, but everyone's kind of caught on both sides. So, you know, if you're a buyer, well, all the good stuff is there. The most sellers are there. And if you're a seller, you want to meet the reach the audience, you have to go there. So it's kind of like a place, you know, it's so crowded. I don't know the right joke exactly, but you can't get away from it because everybody's there and so we're kind of trapped.
- [10:11]
Nicole Turner Lee
And in the book, I find it fascinating as well. You talk about the analogy with a fig tree. Tim, I didn't know you had a green thumb. Or is this just a fig tree that just happened to be in front of your house? I just need more data on this.
- [10:25]
Tim Wu
Actually, I did have it when I lived at my very first job and Charlottesville, Virginia and I was at University of Virginia, a first job in academia. There was just a fig tree in my yard. And you kind of. I just gave off so much fruit, I couldn't believe it. And I think anybody who's had a really productive. There's something deeper in there than just like, wow, that's a lot of fruit. I mean, there is by their nature a lot of surplus in most productive facilities. And so there's this, you know, meaningful way that even the small family farmer will have extra to trade. And I, I've been a big believer that's the source of independent wealth. I know now that, you know, relates us back to the platforms, because if you're going to sell your stuff, it's always going to have to be on some kind of platform. But the platform takes too much. It's very hard to become wealthy.
- [11:14]
Nicole Turner Lee
Well, that was the interesting part about it, right? Because when I was a little girl, we used to run down to the farmer's market where I grew up, and my mother to this day still loves the farm farmer's market near her home. You know, and part of it, as your point is with technology, is that, you know, they bought the, the trade to the, to the market. And with the analogy of your fig tree, what do you do when there's surplus? Well, you have to find other ways to get it past the farmer's market. Right. Essentially. And it seems like, you know, the platforms came at a time where we needed sort of this connection, but, you know, between individual actors and businesses and then ways to distribute out further. Because you remember back in the days they used to say the Internet was a value add because you could get beyond your borders, right? It was like the marketplace without borders. So clearly like the platform economy on the tech side was inevitable because of its power. But what's so interesting, I think is, like, what I enjoyed about the book is like the shift, right, which starts out as this inevitable marketplace that was going to evolve with the, with the commercial Internet. And then the platforms become kind of greedy, right? And they become sort of create this codependency for the small entrepreneurs and businesses. I mean, part of what we had in the past, and this is something that you're very familiar with based on your research, is that we had government agencies to sort of help reel in market power and consolidation and things like that. You mentioned in your book that there's this diminishing power of enforcement, but by federal agencies. And the traditional oversight of tech companies has been very convoluted, you know, as we go through various administrative regimes. I'm curious, like, how did that sort of get to you, to where you were in the book in terms of going from a productive economy to an extractive one? Because I find that to be fascinating.
- [13:04]
Tim Wu
So, first of all, I think you have sketched a narrative very well, which you have This.
- [13:08]
Nicole Turner Lee
I read the book, Tim. I read it. I told you.
- [13:10]
Tim Wu
I know. Well, you have this sort of wondrous, amazing technology that, as you say, very, very productive. And, you know, for a while, it really is the dream come true. Like, if I look at Amazon, you know, 15 years ago, and you're a seller on Amazon, it's very easy to make money. Amazon's only taking like 20% now. Amazon's taking more than brick and mortar retail to be there. You know, they kind of actually, it's like everything else, they just turn the dial on the prices. And if you have noticed as a consumer, it's not actually cheaper anymore either, but the sellers, it's even tougher. So, yeah, there is this progression and there is no discipline or oversight. I mean, one of the things I thought about writing this book, it was like, what if we rewind the clock on electricity and we have these electric companies and they put electricity in everybody's houses? And at first it's amazing and, wow, we could do all this stuff. Then all of a sudden they just keep turning up the prices and turning it up, and then they start saying, well, we've decided you can only use our refrigerators and, like, not somebody else's. And then, like, you know, you can't plug that in. And I don't know, like, you realize that in every essential network there's a lot of potential power. And in the actual case electricity networks, they're very heavily regulated because everybody was like, you know, you can't just have an essential company do whatever it wants. Yet somehow we feel that's fine with the tech platforms that we're so dependent on.
- [14:37]
Nicole Turner Lee
Well, and that's so interesting because, you know, you may talk about the commerce example as one area in which platforms have sort of consolidated the exchange of, of goods and services. But then I thought it was also interesting. You talk about social media as well, right. In particular, sort of commoditizing the exchange of more personal information and data. Talk to. Talk to me about, like, are they different in terms of extraction or are they pretty much the same? Which is the argument you want to convey with people.
- [15:07]
Tim Wu
That's a good. I think the basic idea that you exercise power is the same and you want to keep people there is the same. I think the difference is in the business model. So, you know, at Amazon is more about extracting fees and taking a lot from the sellers and the social media platforms. They are in the business of extracting data and attention that they can resell to advertisers. This was Actually, my second book, the Attention Merchants, was the long story of basically finding and mining attention from the entire 20th century story of the attention economy. And so I think the difference is just in some technical level, the commodity that they're taking, but all of them take data. But the attention of the social media networks feed on attention that they then can resell to other, other to advertisers.
- [16:13]
Nicole Turner Lee
And what's so interesting about this, I mean, in terms of the social media people. And I learned a new term in your book called couch lock.
- [16:21]
Tim Wu
I think it's good you learned that from me.
- [16:23]
Nicole Turner Lee
I did. I, you know, I was like, okay, couch lock. Ok, I think I'm probably guilty of this as well. You sort of go deeper, which is also the framework of many conversations we're seeing today, right, this pushback on social media companies and children's privacy, this conversation around whether or not we should reform Section 230, which sort of indemnified social media companies from any type of harm that comes from their platforms. I mean, why is all of this important, particularly in the regulatory landscape when you start thinking about just how codependent, and I like the way you sort of phrase it from your previous book, how much attention individuals are giving to these platforms?
- [17:03]
Tim Wu
I mean, I guess I returned to the point. It's strange to have entities that so powerful, so much access to data, attention, us so captive and, you know, kind of to just let it all go out. And I think it's not only us as consumers. I think the rest of the economy is increasingly starting to feel it. You know, the news business already has taken, had a lot of its, its money essentially taken by the platform companies. Most sellers and producers are feeling their margins shrinking. So, you know, there's this sort of risk that we become an economy where the only companies that make money are finance and tech. And the people who make anything are, you know, just not really in a position to make money because they're, they are many, while finance and tech are just a few. And, you know, in the real world, the many beat the few, but in economics and business, the few beat the many if they're concentrated enough.
- [18:04]
Nicole Turner Lee
Well, but it's so interesting, right, because back in the days that same argument could have been made. And I think you point out in your book for IBM or Motorola, you know, and other companies that came out at the nascent period when, you know, tech was sort of creating its own identity. I call these companies you're referring to like the teenagers, right? Yeah, to the grandfathers and grandmothers of technology. I mean, what is so different from what these tech companies are doing compared to, and you mentioned this previously, you know, the Microsoft and Bill Gates conceptualization of the operating system, or you know, IBM when it came out with the mainframe and wanted to do more operating software. What's different today? Like, because, because to me, I, I can't put my finger on it, Tim. Right. Because now we're looking at AI and, and I think that's just really like making this much more of an accelerant in terms of the concentration of power in tech and finance. But how do you, how do you reconcile this? Like, what happened? Right.
- [19:04]
Tim Wu
I kind of feel that, well, I believe in a couple of things. I kind of believe that there's nothing truly new under the sun. And I also believe that history works in giant cycles and Silicon Valley at some level has become the problem it was trying to solve. So, you know, think about that old Apple ad in the 80s. I don't know, maybe listeners aren't old enough to realize, but Apple was once this, like, just as an example, anti monopoly company and Silicon Valley itself was all about trying to fight a few big centralized companies like AT&T and IBM or whatever. And I think they have kind of become, they are those companies now. They've replaced them in some ways. They've perfected some of the techniques that those companies used. And so yeah, I, I, you know, some, obviously their technologies are different, they are new, they are more reliant on platforms, they're much more sophisticated at preventing people from leaving. But at another level, the whole idea of domination and having customers who cannot leave you is a similar goal across all this period of history.
- [20:18]
Nicole Turner Lee
Yeah, no, I mean, I think you're right. I mean, I think it's, it's sort of the mirror is before these new companies which are reflections of the other companies, which is why we both love tech. Right. Because it's such a disruptive space with endless possibilities for research and policy, which is, you know, again, when you think about this particular political regime, I mean, do you find it interesting that this particular regime is actually continuing some of the antitrust work that was started in the Biden administration?
- [20:48]
Tim Wu
Yeah, I mean, yes, I'm, I'm pleased and I think some of their filings. Very good. The lawyers are very good. The only thing I'm always afraid of, I, I just don't understand how, I don't understand if this particular administration is going to take things to their complete point or whether it's just a question of getting enough of a price and that's what makes me a little bit concerned. But, you know, at least for now, the lawsuits are still rolling. I think it's amazing how few people actually realize that, you know, there was an entire trial of Facebook in February and it got a little bit of coverage, but, you know, there's, there's always so much going on, like, you know, national guard occupying D.C. or something else happening. There's so much going on that, like, something that would have been headline news in the 90s or, or in the 80s is kind of like, oh, yeah, and they're, they're trying to break up Facebook. I, I, I bet you if you had a poll, how many Americans know that the US Federal government is trying to break up Facebook or at least has filed a suit that, that would do that? I, I don't know. One percent, maybe. Antitrust nerds and a few. Tech. Tech, really intense, you know, people who watch tech very carefully.
- [22:00]
Nicole Turner Lee
Yeah, I know. It's, we just actually published a piece by David Brody, who is looking at one of the cases against Meta and just sort of explaining it for the general public. So I'm curious to see if that's, you know, something people will be interested in, because to your point, we're just bombarded by so many other issues. But I also think, you know, I don't want to gloss over what you said. Some of this could be the extraction of money, right?
- [22:24]
Tim Wu
Yes, that's right.
- [22:25]
Nicole Turner Lee
I don't want to, I don't want to replace the word extraction with extortion, but it's almost like the tech companies and, and the levied fines that we're currently seeing are being done intentionally. Right. So there could be an intentionality about continuing what was started in the Biden administration as well.
- [22:40]
Tim Wu
I know the part of me that's most afraid is that it will become just as cudgel for like. Well, no, I mean, for basically pressuring the tech companies to say, for example, ensure the reelection of President Trump or something like that. Like, something like the prize, I mean, a couple million dollars, frankly, is, is, would be okay.
- [23:02]
Nicole Turner Lee
Yeah.
- [23:03]
Tim Wu
You know, versus like something unconstitutional or some help with something like. I mean, they're already swaying, obviously. I mean, you look at Facebook, as soon as the new president look like he's going to win the election, suddenly Facebook completely changes what they're all about. So, yeah, I feel that I, Look, I'm not the only person in the world worried about political interference with the tech industry, but it's certainly a clear and present danger.
- [23:30]
Nicole Turner Lee
Well, I mean, I Think it's part of like, you know, the reason that there are so many people that still maintain a space in the public interest side of technology. Right. I don't think anyone, you know, thinks that we can live without the tech. I mean, I think the train has already left the station. We are couch locked. Okay. It's basically what you're saying. But I do think that people expect that some of these deals and the ways in which the algorithms are being developed. I mean, I do a lot of work on AI and you know, we want some responsibility in that. I think that's okay for people to want. Right. If they're going to be dependent on these tools. But what's so interesting too now, Tim, I know you from back when with that term net neutrality, right? I mean this was the term that, you know, we call you the founder, we call Larry Irving, sort of the founder of the Digital Divide and Tim Wu, the founder of net neutrality, right. When it came to sort of the framing of the first original concept of removing telecom gatekeepers at the time from the equation. You actually bring that back up in this book. And I was both tickled, but also not surprised based on the fact that you really are moving in a direction of treating platforms like utility companies. Talk to me a little bit about how that actually works.
- [24:44]
Tim Wu
Yeah, well, that's right. Someone I think asked, I was thinking like, what is this book? Is this totally new work? I think this book is the most related to my net neutrality ideas and work in the sense that I just think in every civilization I said there's essential spaces and you got to have some limit on how much they get to take or how they behave. So I think neutrality rules are, you have to write them carefully. But basically Amazon should not be picking and choosing between sellers, certainly shouldn't be putting them in these tournaments where it's a long story. But right now to buy those, you know that you go to Amazon, you search for something and then you get these sponsored links, how much Amazon makes from those things, which are basically people bidding against their own margins. $56 billion in 2024 and probably more this year. So it's an insane amount of money that they're just extracting exchange for making things more confusing and less neutral. So I feel there is a desperate need for a return to neutrality principles on the main selling platforms and also the in main intercompatibility platforms. I would go further. I think I've, you know, I think I, I go further now and say some of the, take some of the percent Taken by some of the platforms is just too much just to allow other sellers to survive. And I guess I keep picking on Amazon. It's a good example. So you know, do we force them to set prices or set their prices equivalent to other platforms? Something like that? I don't know what we do. And then I also think we need to strengthen the people who have to bargain with the main platforms. I mean, a good example, I support. Not everyone does, but I think news organizations should be able to band together and basically collectively bargain to sell their news products. There's some people who really think that's a terrible idea. I think it's a good idea. I think we need what used to be known as countervailing power.
- [26:45]
Nicole Turner Lee
Yeah, I was gonna say that brings up, you know, I'm a sociologist so I was very intrigued by your sociological implications in the book as well. Talk to me about this countervailing power because you sort of talk about that the proletariat of online users should rise up, you know, suggesting and requiring sort of this bidding war or this attention towards how the model may not be benefiting them. Talk, talk to me about that. I mean, I thought I was intrigued. I mean, you know, I started thinking about Eminel Durkheim and Karl Marx, all the people that as I as a sociologist follow.
- [27:16]
Tim Wu
Yeah, actually in Marxist terms, I'm interested in the petty bourgeois who Marx hated because. Because I think they betrayed the Paris Commune. It's very obscure. But actually that's a huge. In other words, that's a weird and complicated way to saying that I support small and medium sized businesses and in addition to the, you know, labor, working. The working class is, I think they should be unified more against basically this extraction. I mean I think we have in our time masquerading as a bunch of political anxiety and distress really a class problem because we're moving towards a two class country, extreme wealth and you know, kind of lower middle class for everyone else. And it's I think dangerous for a number of reasons, among which is the danger of revolution becomes larger and it might be funny. Just think about. Platforms are a key part of it or basically the extractive power of the most powerful parts of our economy. So I think we need to think of measures that let more people get rich and not just a small number of firms or platforms. Net neutrality or platform neutrality is part of that. So is utility regulation. But frankly it's a much broader agenda, economy wide agenda that some of which I talk about in the book.
- [28:33]
Nicole Turner Lee
Well, that's so interesting and I, and I, you know, I want to ask this question and then we'll start to wrap up. Are these platforms though all the same, right? Can you get the type of economic extraction from E commerce platform versus a social media platform? I mean, I think part of the quagmire we're in in society today is which is more valuable, my product or my data? Or is it actually both? With AI for example, is driving, you know, the confluence of both. I mean, how do you get people to get that?
- [29:05]
Tim Wu
Man, you know, I know, yeah, it's. I, I think to me it's all just value extraction and it's all just value extraction and sometimes it's called money, sometimes it's called data. But the question is, is like, how fair is this exchange ultimately? And look, we get a lot, we get stubborn return. It's a very convenient world. It's hard for any of us like individually to bargain more. I guess you can put up an ad blocker or something like that. But I see it all as the same and I think it's spreading. Like, I think the housing industry got smart about 10 years ago to rental housing and figured out ways to try to extract more from renters. You know, we have obviously have a housing crisis in this country and it's. Maybe we should talk about it more as a tech issue because what has made these constant coordinated rent increases possible is the technologies of coordination. Some of them are just software, but some of them are companies that buy huge amounts of rental software and are just very systematic coordinated about their extraction techniques. So in a way the problem of platform extraction goes beyond just like, oh, there's too many ads on Facebook or something and goes to like, why is my rent, you know, now 6,000, whatever, 7,000, keep going up, fees going up? You know, it's an economy wide thing.
- [30:26]
Nicole Turner Lee
Yeah, but I mean that thing, see, think about too. And I would love to just ask you this as we, you know, get closer to going offline AI, I mean, isn't that going to be the key? I was something you said which I thought was so interesting in the book. You said, you know, there should be this conversation as to whether or not these big tech companies should also purchase and sort of become the AI company. So conjoining them in ways that they actually maximize their market power. But then also, you know, implicit in the book is that part of the way that these platforms have become larger is because of their acquisition of smaller companies. I mean, isn't it like the startup's dream to be purchased? That's the first question and then 2. Isn't it inevitable that things are going to become more concentrated with AI?
- [31:11]
Tim Wu
I guess I think that all things are a cycle and I think we should actually. The history of American tech is about challengers. It's a history of new companies coming along and challenging the old guys. And that Apple challenging IBM, AOL challenging AT&T. In some sense, MCI, it is really going further back. Bell Telephone challenging Western Union. It is a history of challenge. And when the big guys work together, it's usually bad for when the challengers get that off. I'm just trying to say that's bad for us. We want challengers to stand and fight. And what I'm most worried about with AI is that you end up in a situation where AI could provide a new challenge to the major platforms, force them to be better. Instead, they get bought off and turned into another, basically, couch lock technology. Some way of making people just stick around and not care about being extracted from. I'm glad you picked up on the term couch lock.
- [32:15]
Nicole Turner Lee
Yeah, it is. Yeah. My son, who's a guitarist, explained it to me better when I share with him, what does this mean? I mean, the way he's contextualizing it. But I agree with you. I love this idea, though, of challengers, because I think that's why all of us who are in tech are excited about tech, because it is a precursor to the next phase of our, you know, economic evolution, but also it allows us the opportunity to imagine. So you end your book with optimism. You know, I. I was thinking about that fig tree, right? Because at the end of the day, those figs are still going to be on your graph and they're still going to become, you know, over time, they're going to wilt and people going to step on them and they're going to become an eyesore unless you do something with them. And that's, I think, the imagination of all these people that go to these platforms to sort of bolster their visibility. Which is why I titled my book Digitally Invisible, because I think, you know, you're talking about the people that I care about as well, you know, that are not seen. But this optimism you have, like, Tim, where does that come from? Like, where's the optimism?
- [33:20]
Tim Wu
I mean, it comes from history. I think we've had problems like this before and we kind of somehow managed to salt, at least address them. Not perfect. Nothing's perfect. But we got back to something that worked for more people. I mean, the economy, in fact, was even more unfair about 120 years ago, you know, the beginning of 20th century because of these huge giant monopoly trust platforms like Standard oil or whatever, U.S. steel and those are big tech companies actually in a way, like US Steel was a at the time, big tech, heavy tech. And eventually we kind of did things like have a minimum wage or huge number of breakups or rules regulating telecoms or the train industry, the icc. So we've been there before. I think we can solve, I hope we can solve this problem that we're facing without a full on what other countries have had full on political revolution. And you know, there is the ingredients there for a broad and lasting prosperity. We just kind of got to get it right.
- [34:24]
Nicole Turner Lee
Wow. Yeah. That's the key, right? We've got to get it right because I think, you know, again, we have so many different angles of how extraction happens. But then at the same token, we still need to get those figs traded. You know, I, I really love that analogy of that tree. I have one of those. I don't have a fig tree tree, but I determined that I have a berry tree that does that. And the only difference is that when people walk on the berry, it gets into my house. So I'm trying to figure out how to solve that. You know, from the shoe prints.
- [34:57]
Tim Wu
Maybe you need your guests take their shoes off at the door.
- [34:59]
Nicole Turner Lee
You know what, that could actually be a, you know, maybe that's something we could say to the tech companies. Maybe just be a little fairer in the extraction. It may might solve some stuff, I don't know. But I have so enjoyed talking to you as part of the Tech Tank podcast. You are completely, you know, honest and authentic in terms of being and consistent, honestly, over the years that I have known you and known about your work. Thank you, Tim, so much for joining us today.
- [35:25]
Tim Wu
It was a pleasure. Thank you. What a great conversation.
- [35:27]
Nicole Turner Lee
Yeah, it was great. I mean, listen, we're going to keep watching how this evolves and I want to tell everybody who's listening. Tim's book Age of Extraction, How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity can be found wherever you shop for books, including the place that we talked about. Please explore more in depth content on tech policy issues at Tech Tank on the Brookings site, accessible at brookings. Edu. Your feedback matters to us about the substance of this episode and so many others that we do. So leave a comment. Let us know. Like us, do whatever it takes. Share it. We're looking for you and we appreciate all of those who are loyal listeners. This concludes another insightful episode of the Tech Tank podcast, we make bits into palatable bites. Until next time, thank you for listening. Thank you for listening to Tech Tank, a series of roundtable discussions and interviews with technology experts and policymakers. For more more conversations like this, subscribe to the podcast and sign up to receive the Tech Tank newsletter for more research and analysis from the center for Technology Innovation at Brookings.