I think you articulated it well. It trivializes life. Countless animals die horrifically for science, but much of it is ultimately in the pursuit of valuing human life. This is something different. This animal has been reduced to a device accessory.
After watching macro trends in U.S. politics and tech for a while, I've held (but not articulated much) a sense that power is shifting from federal government to private interests. Previously that would have meant corporate boards, but I think increasingly it's a small number of individuals (due to realpolitik).
The good thing about messy, human models of transactions and interaction is that it can take a long time and many different voices can be heard, allowing disuptes to occur and be resolved.
Many of these successful tech corporates work to eliminate the human discussion element, and replace it with digitized (and frequently proprietary, or at least gatekept) rules.
I think I've dealt with a few difficult dominant personality types in the past, and it would not surprise me at all to see them consider humans-as-pets as a desirable future. Match that with digitized 'asset ownership' and other non-repudiable mechanisms and there could be a very dystopian and authoritarian future in the mind of some of these people.
Now I'll make sure to sound like a complete nutter (as if I hadn't already) and mention that some of these individuals and companies are now so essential to the U.S., both domestically and internationally, that they are becoming untouchable.
Meanwhile our own tech industry is busy debating and trying to determine what the future of libre software will look like. It's a pivotal moment and I'm optimistic we'll figure it out to everyone's benefit, but there is a lot at stake.
