Ethics Have Become Optional in Big Tech. We Can Do Better. (with Alex Komoroske)

Alex Komoroske spent over a decade at Google overseeing key initiatives for ads, Chrome, and Maps, before running Corporate Strategy at Stripe. At heart, he's a champion for the open web. Today, as the CEO and co-founder of Common Tools, Alex says technologists must lean into ethics and away from short-term results.

"We're in the late stage of this extractive kind of thing, where we're all just trying to wring more out of these walled gardens," Alex adds. "And what bothers me is that all of us seem to have forgotten that. And everyone's like, in this zombie state: 'Well, the thing says make number go up.'"

Today on Revolution.Social, Alex and Rabble talk about the challenges of maintaining interoperability in an era of proprietary lock-in; the difference between "hollow" vs. "resonant" tech experiences; and the Resonant Computing Manifesto, which Alex co-drafted last year. They also discuss the rightward political shift of Silicon Valley, Alex's Lord of the Rings-inspired archetypes for understanding builders, and how to curate cozy offline communities.

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction

5:24 The "Slime Mold" Theory of Organizations

10:53 The Fallacy of Measurement and KPIs

15:49 Christopher Alexander and Pattern Language

17:51 The Resonant Computing Manifesto

21:06 Chatbots vs. Agentic LLMs

26:54 Saruman vs. Radagast

31:53 Power Dynamics and "Money Disease"

38:45 How LLMs Change Software

42:52 The History of the Luddite Movement

47:54 APIs as Public Infrastructure

52:48 Lessons from the Open Web and Chrome

59:43 App Stores vs. The Web Sandbox

1:04:42 Balancing Open Systems with Speed

1:09:09 User-Driven Innovation at Twitter

1:10:53 Cloud Security Tiers and Data Privacy

1:16:44 The Power of Physical Salons and Curation

1:22:47 Hypersituated Software and Local Community

Follow Rabble on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/rabble.nz

Follow the podcast: https://episodes.fm/1824528874

This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm, and executive produced by Alice Chan from Flock Marketing.

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