Beyond Big and Bad: An Amoral Analysis

The first two decades of the twenty-first century are notable for the emergence of Big Tech. Whilst open to interpretation, this term is generally used to refer to a select number of American corporations, i.e. Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft, and their various activities. Further to their often being ranked as the world’s largest corporations by market value, these firms are collectively referred to as Big Tech due to their being a major part of daily life for a great many people. On any given day, for example, people around the world will use an Apple device to post a message on Facebook, purchase a product on Amazon, conduct a search on Google and write a document with a Microsoft program.

Given the assumption that those with great power often fail to discharge their responsibilities, it is to be expected that the ‘Big Tech’ label has quickly come to possess a negative connotation. Thus, Wu (Reference Wu2018) has suggested that Big Tech is a social, political and economic curse, and Foer (Reference Foer2017) has warned that Big Tech constitutes an existential threat. Likewise, Zuboff (Reference Zuboff2015: 81) has voiced her concern that Big Tech is responsible for the emergence of the ‘Big Other’: ‘a new universal architecture existing somewhere between nature and God … that records, modifies, and commodifies everyday experience … with a view to … monetization and profit’.

The critiques that these three authors have advanced, along with others of a broadly similar mind (e.g. Morozov, Reference Morozov2011), are often well founded. Yet, in their concern to resist ‘the ideas that fuel these companies’ (Foer, Reference Foer2017: 8); to ‘struggle for democracy’ and diminish ‘private power’ (Wu, Reference Wu2018: 138); and to mobilize ‘in the name of humanity and the future’ (Zuboff, Reference Zuboff and Jørgensen2019: 41), such authors tend to overlook, if not deliberately obscure, a variety of more general, and very fundamental, impacts that Big Tech is having on lived reality.

With the present work, I propose that the idea of a megacorporation can help to further reveal such considerations. Whilst the term ‘megacorporation’ is itself far from new, I am unaware of any sustained effort to detail its meaning. Given as such, the first contribution I make with the present work is to conceive of the megacorporate concept. In short, and as the prefix ‘mega’ indicates, I posit that a megacorporation is defined by its possessing a level of importance and influence that greatly surpasses that of other corporate forms, and by its influencing the lives of a huge number of people in very basic, foundational ways. Given the oversized breadth and depth of their influence, megacorporations will always be more or less limited in number. In fact, there may be times when no corporation is capable of satisfying such demanding criteria.

Apple and Facebook, for instance, are both of sufficient influence as to merit being included amongst the Big Tech brethren. Nevertheless, their respective business interests remain relatively narrow in focus – with Apple being best known for its consumer products and Facebook for social media. And whilst Microsoft and Amazon are more diverse, they likewise remain focused on developments in computing and online commerce respectively. As a result, none of these four companies can currently be considered a megacorporation.

Alphabet on the other hand, which was created back in 2015 through a corporate restructuring of Google, can be considered a megacorporation given its range of interests. In addition to Google Search, Android and YouTube, each of which have more than a billion users, Alphabet is heavily invested in the health sciences through companies such as Calico and Verily, in automated vehicles through its holdings in companies like Waymo and Uber, in urban design and development through Sidewalk Labs, and in the new space industry through its investment in SpaceX.

Whilst this breadth of investments differentiates Alphabet from its Big Tech contemporaries, it does not make it a unique corporate form. Indeed, there is a relatively significant number of corporate groups around the world that have similarly diversified, or even more diversified, investments: South Korea’s chaebol (e.g., Samsung, LG) and Japan’s keiretsu (e.g., Mitsubishi) spring to mind. What differentiates Alphabet from these conglomerates, and all other (groups of) corporations, then, is its capacity to shape how we construct and experience the past and the future at both the personal and social levels.

To begin making sense of this last statement, it helps to note that Alphabet’s biotech subsidiary Calico is, as Time magazine once put it, trying to ‘solve death’ (McCracken & Grossman, Reference McCracken and Grossman2013). Even if Calico’s efforts prove just partly successful (by pushing death’s door just a little farther back for just a few people), Alphabet will help change the experience of personal futures. In many ways, Alphabet’s Google has already had such an impact on our personal pasts. The European ‘right to be forgotten’ ruling, which enables people to ask Google to remove links to (mis)information that would otherwise be returned when someone ‘googles’ their name, provides one specific manifestation of the megacorporation’s influence in such regard.

Alphabet is impacting on similar matters at the social level too. By collecting more and more data on more and more aspects of domestic and communal life, Alphabet investments – such as Orbital Insight, a geospatial analytics organization that works with satellite imagery, and Nest, a smart or connected home company – are helping to build an historical store of information that changes how we can construct and conceive our social pasts. And with its various moonshots, and many other less speculative investments, Alphabet is contributing to a whole new set of means by which future human societies on Earth and beyond might be created and governed.

All of these various impacts, even those that are described as being potential at best, are controversial. In fact, one can commonly pick just one development that Alphabet is invested in, do a quick search on it and find a whole list of moral concerns. Alphabet’s investment in SpaceX – which as a result of its plans to create a huge satellite internet service called Starlink has been accused of starting a project that could ‘blight the night sky’ for earthbound astronomers (Devlin, Reference Devlin2019) – provides a case in point. In addition to that, reports disclosing the presence of a hidden microphone within a Nest home security system (Amadeo, Reference Amadeo2019) provide yet one more illustration of why so many people think of Alphabet entities as spies.

In light of this well-established, Alphabet-focused ‘cacophony of critique’ (Boland, Reference Boland2018), the present analysis is more concerned to remain amoral than it is to moralize. Whilst I fall short of achieving this goal – in that the work is unavoidably informed by my own values – I have tried to be morally indifferent in completing the analyses, and building the conceptual constructs, that the book contains. That being said, I also think that this amoral ideal is justifiable. For whereas the concern to morally judge can narrow vision, the concern to amorally understand can broaden it.

This ideal of amoral analysis also informs the book’s second contribution: the explication and elaboration of the ideology of infinite times. When conceived amorally, ideology refers to the cognitive structures that shape and limit our experiences (e.g., Jameson, Reference Jameson and Žižek2016). It also refers to motives that – because they tend to be implicit or taken for granted – give rise to much of what we strive for and much that we want to be (Greimas, Reference Greimas1983: 293; Greimas & Courtés, Reference Greimas and Courtés1982: 222). It is in this non-pejorative sense of ideology, that the ideology of infinite times is here associated with the widespread concern to indefinitely extend humanity’s past and future at both the personal and social levels.

To begin with its historical aspect, the ideology of infinite times can be seen to manifest through the – currently ever-increasing – documentation of daily existence for specific individuals and whole societies. Presuming it is successfully stored and maintained, this information will provide future historians, and anyone else that is interested, with details about daily life that far exceed those that we have had on prior lives and generations up until now. And with regard to its forward-looking aspect, the ideology of infinite times is evidenced by the widespread concern to extend the length of healthy existence for individual humans and to sustain humanity’s development for as long as possible.

Further to informing a whole range of activities at the individual, industrial and social levels, the infinite times ideology specifically shapes Alphabet’s activities too. Without an awareness of the infinite times ideology, however, Alphabet’s diverse activities and interests can seem fragmented and unrelated. What the explication of the infinite times ideology therefore does is show how these diverse ongoings come together to form a whole. It reveals that the concern to expand our temporal horizons as far as possible, both backwards and forwards, plays a key role in ensuring that Alphabet’s many interests do not pull it apart.

The explication of the infinite times ideology has a number of other benefits too. First, and given that many others appear to be informed by the ideology of infinite times, the detailing of this ideology helps explain why the masses might actively support Alphabet’s huge accumulation of wealth and power – an accumulation that Zuboff (Reference Zuboff2015) argues is based on an extractive relationship that people could never reasonably consent to.

The identification of the infinite times ideology also suggests that ideological conflicts will increasingly focus on the merits of human civilization and human pre-eminence. At the moment, ideological conflicts are commonly fought from a variety of political-economic perspectives, e.g., libertarian, liberal, democratic, socialist. Whatever else their differences, these political-economic perspectives are all similar in that they tend to take the merit and superiority of humanity for granted. Such assumptions, however, are likely to be increasingly reconsidered if investments by Alphabet, and other similarly informed organizations, continue. The reason why is that these investments can contribute to risks that could undermine the infinite times ideology both directly (e.g., through the risk of technologically induced extinction) and indirectly (e.g., by encouraging those opposed to the infinite times ideology to resist it).

As these initial remarks indicate, by conceiving of the megacorporate construct and the infinite times ideology, I contribute to the flourishing literature on Big Tech by showing that Alphabet is reshaping existence in ways that are more fundamental than are generally recognized. In doing so, I also make two additional contributions to the more specific fields of business and society and organization studies. These contributions relate to my proposing that scholars in these related domains can benefit from a philosophical turn and from an increased focus on how business organizations influence society. As these field-specific contributions are not of explicit concern throughout the rest of the book, I quickly detail them in the two sections below.

A Philosophical Turn

Underpinning the academic field of business and society teaching and research is the recognition that business plays a significant role within modern societies. Given that this role will often be linked to other organizations or institutions – e.g., governments, laws, religions, the non-profit sector – the business and society literature discusses other actors and structures as well. Nevertheless, the business and society literature remains focused, by definition, on the relationship between commercial activities and communal concerns (Crane et al., Reference Crane, Henriques, Husted and Matten2015; Greenwood & Freeman, Reference Greenwood and Freeman2017). Like other academic fields (e.g., cultural studies, international relations), the field of business and society has been informed by a number of different, and more or less longstanding, theoretical traditions. Consequently, and prior to arguing that the field can benefit from an increased engagement with philosophy, I first differentiate between the ethical, political and socio-economic theoretical traditions that currently dominate.

Corporate-Shaped Societies

If one was forced to pick the main idea advanced by the business and society literature, one could do worse than refer to the posited need for businesses to comply with existent social understandings. Thus, the ethical tradition commonly suggests that corporations need to comply with extant norms regarding human rights wherever they operate; the political tradition that corporations need to be governed in an increasingly deliberative fashion if they are to be considered democratically legitimate; and the socio-economic tradition that corporations need to respond to reputational threats if they are to prove capable of maintaining their socially sanctioned ‘licence to operate’.

This general tendency to emphasize the power that society has to shape corporations, is consistent with, and often directly informed by, trends throughout the organization and management studies literature. Institutional theorists, for example, have long focused on how external environments shape internal organizational environments, and critical theorists have explored the ways in which macro-level discourses shape corporations in a top-down fashion (Weber & Waeger, Reference Weber and Waeger2017).

This tendency to emphasize how corporate agency is socially shaped and constrained is also consistent with developments found throughout the humanities and social sciences, where Foucault’s (Reference Foucault1977: 31) idea of genealogical analysis as a ‘history of the present’ has shaped a great deal of work (Garland, Reference Garland2014). Barkan’s (Reference Barkan2013) genealogical inquiry of the manner in which medieval religious thought helped give rise to ideas of corporate sovereignty, and of how subsequent transformations in US law in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries helped shape contemporary notions of corporate personhood, provides one illustration.

The point being made is that the business and society literature tends to reverse its alphabetic ordering when it comes to the apportioning of power. As various authors operating outside the traditionally defined field of business and society suggest, however, the rapid emergence of Google (e.g. Stross, Reference Stross2008; Vaidhyanathan, Reference Vaidhyanathan2011), and the rest of the Big Tech cohort, indicate that at least a little more weight should be placed on the business side of the scales. Numerous historical cases suggest the same thing. The Massachusetts Bay Company, whose corporate charter from 1629 enabled it to operate more or less independently of British Royal oversight (Anderson Reference Anderson and Canny1998: 198), and to help form American ideals of association and democracy (Conway, Reference Conway and Marshall1998; de Tocqueville, Reference de Tocqueville1945; Innes, Reference Innes and Beatty2001; MacMillan, Reference MacMillan and Foster2013; Maier, Reference Maier1993; Shy, Reference Shy and Marshall1998), provides one illustration. The English East India Company, which is discussed in more detail in Chapter 2 provides another.

A Simple Method of Construction

The two main ideas advanced throughout the present book are that (1) megacorporations are defined by their capacity to shape fundamental considerations of existence for a large number of people and that (2) the ideology of infinite times underlies the existential impacts of the megacorporation Alphabet. As I imagine is the case for many other ideas or concepts, the two just mentioned did not emerge ex nihilo, but from my engaging with colleagues and friends, paying attention to Google and then Alphabet, and from my consumption of media in general. No doubt, the ideas are informed by other factors too. Whatever the case, the point to note is that once I fixed on these two ideas, I used them to guide my engagement with all the materials that are referenced throughout the book. In this fashion, all the other ideas here referred to are, more or less literally, defined by the use I make of them (see Dewey, Reference Dewey1933: 136).

If one is willing to conceive ‘method’ loosely, then this approach can be considered a (purpose-driven) method (Freeman & Greenwood, Reference Freeman and Greenwood2020). More specifically, it is consistent with what I term the mélange approach to (historical) composition in Chapter 5. In contrast to the massive approach that is also detailed in Chapter 5, and which strives for exhaustiveness in its treatment of data, the mélange approach enables a user to pick and choose between the materials they utilize. Such an approach, suffice it to note, has little interest in providing the last word on original empirical sources, or in idolizing extant theoretical perspectives. But it is not interested in bastardization (of other works) for bastardization’s sake either (see also, Deleuze, Reference Deleuze1977). Rather, this very simple method of construction enables those who use it to combine and utilize different ideas and sources of data to realize their own goals.

A Three-Part Structure

In detailing and illustrating the megacorporate concept and the ideology of infinite times, the book is structured into three main sections. The purpose of Part I is to introduce and define the megacorporate concept, and to show that Alphabet is a megacorporation. Accordingly, Chapter 2 begins by proposing that a megacorporation can be differentiated from the related notions of a normal corporation, a multinational corporation and a total corporation, on two grounds. First, and unlike both normal corporations and total corporations, megacorporations are defined by the global scale of their operations. Second, and in contrast to both normal corporations and multinational corporations, megacorporations are defined by the broad scope of their influence. Having made these general distinctions, it is then more specifically suggested that, if a corporation is to be characterized as a megacorporation, then it will need to be associated with monopolistic activities, corporate social responsibility concerns, political-economic hybridity and existential impacts. As the English East India Company was associated with all these considerations, Chapter 2 argues that it provides one, particularly clear, historical illustration.

In applying the same criteria, Chapter 3 proposes that Alphabet is a megacorporation too. As Alphabet’s existence is dependent – some would say parasitic – upon Google’s massive profitability, Chapter 3 begins with an overview of Google’s context, creation and success. The emergence of Alphabet is then contextualized by the seeming need for Google’s founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, to ‘burn’ some Google cash and broaden Google’s, already ambitious, organizational vision. Following this, and prior to concluding, the chapter details the first three considerations that make Alphabet a megacorporation: i.e. its monopolistic activities, its political-economic hybridity and its corporate social responsibility concerns.

The fourth and most important consideration that results in Alphabet being considered a megacorporation, its existential impacts, are the subject of Part II. The purpose of this second part of the book is to show how Alphabet is changing how we construct, experience and manage, both that which is already past and that which is yet to be. As detailed in Table 1.1, the four chapters that Part II contains are characterized by a number of differences and similarities.

To begin with the differences, each chapter is distinguished in terms of orientation (past or future), level of analysis (personal or social) and the extent to which the matters discussed are speculative (low or high). And in terms of the similarities, each of the chapters show how the changes (potentially) being wrought by Alphabet can be conceived as encouraging more monolithic developments on the one hand, and more multiple developments on the other.

To further explain, note that orientation is here said to change when an agent turns backwards to consider the past, or forwards to consider the future. Of course, the past and the future, and the present too, can be difficult to disentangle. Hence, Chapter 4 is less concerned with discussing pasts already created, than it is with the pasts that people are constantly in the process of helping create for their future selves. And Chapter 5 suggests, amongst other things, that a key motivation for engaging with social pasts is to encourage some sort of change or development in present-day societies. By way of contrast, the future orientation of Chapters 6 and 7 is simpler, in that both chapters are focused on the role technologies can, or could, play in making future existences longer.

The second main difference characterizing Part II’s chapters is due to their being situated at either the personal level of analysis – which relates to identifiable individuals, albeit ones that might increase in number (as per the multiple constructive tendency – see below) or the social level of analysis – which relates to communities of variable characteristics and size: e.g. local communities, national communities, global communities (see also, Aguilera et al., Reference Aguilera, Rupp, Williams and Ganapathi2007).

Third, the chapters of Part II are also distinguished on the basis of their being more or less speculative. Chapters 6 and 7 are conceived as relatively high in this regard given that they both refer to developments that are far from certain, such as the possibility of radically extending individual biological existence (Chapter 6) and of inhabiting other planets (Chapter 7). Most of the technologies discussed in Chapters 4 and 5, by way of contrast, are already existent. Consequently, these chapters are marked as having a low degree of speculation.

Notwithstanding these differences, Part II’s chapters are also similar in that two constructive tendencies are associated with their various developments. The first tendency is termed monolithic. It is associated with phenomena that are more or less singular. This monolithic tendency results in individuals or societies being pulled together so as to create, or maintain, what amounts to one more or less integrated and homogeneous whole. The second tendency is termed multiple. It relates to efforts or concerns to keep individuals or societies in a heterogeneous state, to break them up or tease them apart, or to decompose individuals or societies into separate elements. In short, what the four chapters that comprise Part II suggest – with regard to the pasts and the futures that are being created at both the personal and social levels – is that Alphabet’s existential impacts are simultaneously encouraging, or enabling of, these monolithic and multiple constructive tendencies.

With the idea of a megacorporation having been defined and illustrated in Part I and with the nature and importance of Alphabet’s existential impacts having been detailed in Part II, the book concludes, in Part III, by reflecting on the main threats to Alphabet’s being. Accordingly, Chapter 8 notes that, whilst the ideology of infinite times plays a key role in holding Alphabet together – by helping the megacorporation to be conceived as the custodian of our pasts and futures – it also contributes to its ultimate falling apart. The reason why is that, like everything else, the ideology of infinite times is itself finite. And in turning to a variety of more mundane considerations, the book’s final chapter (Chapter 9) posits that Alphabet’s megacorporate status is externally threatened by concerns to undermine its various monopolies, and internally threatened by what appears to be increasing discord amongst its employees. Whilst the exact date of Alphabet’s death remains uncertain, Part III emphasizes that Alphabet will one day cease to be.

Summary

This chapter began by noting that, in striving for an amoral ideal of analysis, the present book develops and illustrates the megacorporate construct, and explicates and details the ideology of infinite times. Following this, the book’s more implicit concerns of encouraging the fields of business and society, and organization studies, to take a philosophical turn, and to focus more on corporate capacities to shape societies, were outlined. Brief discussions of the book’s very simple method, and of its three-part structure, were then provided. In short, this introduction has clarified my motivations for writing the book, acknowledged the broader context shaping it, and explained the constructive process that informs its final structure.