Glad For Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon

In our cynical world, the tech world's Big Four (Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon) have their share of haters and scoffers.  Who hasn't bashed on or whined about any and all of these tech behemoths?  But consider each company's raison d'etre - how audacious these aims would have sounded to someone just a generation ago, and yet how each has largely and remarkably been achieved:

Facebook - To connect the whole world.  What has been a better connector during Sandy than FB?  Through its News Feed, I heard how everyone was doing, got a sense of where power was going out, took turns laughing and crying at various news images being shared, and received heartwarming notes of concern from friends and family outside of the East Coast.  My world just got a lot smaller, in a wonderfully good and fantastically efficient way.

Google - To organize the world's information.  If it hasn't been refreshing my Facebook feed, it's been tracking news and satellite images from Google's various sites.  Again, think of how improbable it would have been just a generation ago to aggregate all of this information.  Now think of how easy it is today.

Apple and Amazon - To make insanely and extraordinarily beautiful consumer products, and to turn the whole world into your shopping cart.  Done and done.  These we might have imagined a generation ago, but kudos to Apple and Amazon for actually executing.  Btw, do you realize that "pinch and zoom" is only five years old?  Or can you remember the user interface and product selection of online shopping from just 15 years ago?

We still live in a world in which an unacceptably high number of people live in abject misery, so my next statement is tempered with that reality and with the burden it should place on all of us who are fortunate.  But life is, for many people in this world, unbelievably rich.  For those of us lucky enough to be counted among that growing number, let's quit all the complaining and snark.