Irresistible forces

Why Amazon, Google, and Facebook rule the world

Technology addiction.
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This is the editor’s letter in the current issue of The Week magazine.

Every time I hit the "add to cart" button, I feel a twinge of guilt. Just a twinge, mind you, and it doesn't stop me from ordering another item from Amazon that I could have bought at a retail store. Why drive? With a push of the finger, boxes arrive at my door: books, razor blades, gasoline stabilizer, dog food and poop bags, ashwagandha root, waterproof car-key bags for my kayak. This habit, of course, makes me complicit in how Amazon laid waste to the bookstores I once loved to browse, and in its ongoing siege of specialty shops, department stores, and malls. When I Google, I'm also complicit in what the search giant (and Facebook) has done to the newspaper industry that employed me for 25 years, and still provides the reporting we need to have a functioning democracy. Yet shaped by immediate rewards, I go on Googling and one-click ordering anyway, abetting these companies' growth into $500 billion behemoths as dominant as the monopolies of the Gilded Age. (See the Briefing in the latest issue of The Week.)

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William Falk

William Falk is editor-in-chief of The Week, and has held that role since the magazine's first issue in 2001. He has previously been a reporter, columnist, and editor at the Gannett Westchester Newspapers and at Newsday, where he was part of two reporting teams that won Pulitzer Prizes.