An Insight from a Big Tech Guru

Please read very, very carefully, the following quote. It is attributed to Justin Rosenstein, a former engineer of Twitter and Google, and it is extracted from the documentary A Social Dilemma (in Netflix).

“We live in a world in which a tree is worth more, financially, dead than alive. This is a world in which a whale is worth more dead than alive. For so long as our economy works in that way, and corporations go unregulated, they’re going to continue to destroy trees, to kill whales, to mine the earth, and to continue to pull oil out of the ground, even though we know it is destroying the planet and we know it is going to leave a worse world for future generations.

“This is short-term thinking based on this religion of profit at all costs. As if somehow, magically, each corporation acting in its selfish interest is going to produce the best result. … What’s frightening – and what hopefully is the last straw and will make us wake up as a civilization as to how flawed this theory is in the first place – is to see that now we are the tree, we are the whale. Our attention can be mined. We are more profitable to a corporation if we’re spending time staring at a screen, staring at an ad, than if we’re spending our time living our life in a rich way.”

Please address the following:

1.  What do you think Rosenstein means when he says, “now we are the tree, we are the whale?” (Only one paragraph please).

2.  Again, what does he mean when he says: “Our attention can be mined. We are more profitable to a corporation if we’re spending time staring at a screen, staring at an ad.” (Only one paragraph please).

3.  What type of regulation, if any, would you propose for the Big Tech companies? Please explain why. (Only one paragraph please).