Main content

The Internet Age: For richer or poorer?

Have Google and the rest made the world more or less fair? One author thinks Tech has betrayed its democratising promise. Another disagrees. Also is it time for Twitter to evolve?

Three years ago, working class protestors in San Francisco threw rocks at buses carrying Google employees. They felt that these rich yuppee commuters were pricing them out of their neighbourhoods. Douglas Rushkoff has just written a book, "Throwing Rocks at the Googlebus - how growth became the enemy of prosperity", arguing that this protest symbolised a wider failure of the Tech giants to deliver on their early pledge to do no evil, and make the world a better and fairer place. However, another Silicon Valley veteran commentator, Mike Malone, strongly disagrees. Also in the programme, our regular commentator, Jeremy Wagstaff of Reuters, asks if recent public arguments focussed around Twitter in Indonesia are symptomatic of a wider problem with this particular social network. Does Twitter need to change?
(Image: TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images)

Available now

18 minutes

Last on

Fri 18 Mar 2016 08:32GMT

Broadcast

  • Fri 18 Mar 2016 08:32GMT

Podcast