Tag: silicon valley

Disruption achieved.  What now?

Returning to the generalization that the internet is the “best thing ever to happen to democracy,” I have to ask this:  if the proof of the pudding is in the eating, how do we like the soufflé so far?  Admittedly, the unprecedented scope of the Women’s March on January 21 would not have been possible without social media; but at the same time, I very much doubt that a candidate in the style of Donald Trump could have become president without social media, so I guess we’re going to have to live with that dichotomy.

Setting aside Trump’s policy agenda—to the extent that it is coherent—what I believe he represents above all is a vote of no confidence in the American system itself.  And to be honest, I believe Bernie Sanders’s campaign represented this for many people as well–albeit in a very different manner.  But what these two radically divergent populists had in common was a message that the middle class is getting hammered because the system has failed.  It’s why the Sanders-to-Trump voter is not the contradiction it might seem; but I do find it at least worth pondering that the election of 2016 was very much A Tale of Two Angry Old Men.  Not that I discount Hillary Clinton by any means, but it seems as though the venn diagram that combines many swing votes in the electorate who would never vote for Hillary with those who reluctantly voted for Hillary shared that common complaint that the establishment itself is the problem.

And now that we are watching Trump’s approach to “shaking up Washington” play out in an exhausting whirlwind of political heterodoxy, I can’t help but think about that youthful and ebullient mantra of Silicon Valley that preaches Disrupt Everything. Citizens across the political spectrum, fed up with the status quo on a wide range of social, political, and economic issues, either actively or passively endorsed this disrupt zeitgeist. Remember the old Facebook motto Move fast and break things that was echoed by the VCs and creators of tech startups?  Could that not also serve as the headline for Trump’s first weeks in the White House?

The cacophony of political theater and real policy proposals of the new administration has certainly been breathtaking, but it is also familiar territory to those of us who spend time scrutinizing the PR and policy aims of the internet industry. The disestablishment playbook of Bannon seems to share, one might say, substantial similarity with the disestablishment playbook of Google when that company opposes legal regimes like copyright law, privacy restrictions, anti-trust regulation, or even the notion of statehood itself.

Like the sledgehammer Trump wants to take to all regulation in order to supposedly “get business flowing again,” Google & Friends have repeated almost the same message to sell the idea that legal regimes like copyright are anachronisms standing in the way of innovation. The sleight of hand works well because the goal is vague.  That word innovation is no more clearly defined than the word great in Trump’s campaign slogan. But the spirit of disruption insists that we not discuss the nagging details about where we might be headed. It says that we must simply break things right away and have faith that benefits are sure to follow.

And I do literally mean faith.  Because an enthusiasm for mass disruption seems to come from a deep well of magical thinking. Whether this means an overtly theocratic agenda a la Bannon or an overtly technocratic one a la Google, both visions seem to share this one underlying message:  that many foundations of the American Republic (i.e. all things mainstream) are standing in the way of a bright future. It feels as though we are locking in a dismal choice between the catastrophe of a new, theocratic global order or the uncertainty of a quasi-democratic, technological, “leisure” society. Or perhaps some bizarre, dystopian version of the two.  Meanwhile, the AI technologists continue their race to bring about the singularity with the same determinist zeal that Steve Bannon exhibits about the prospect of a war with China. Are we truly that eager for self-annihilation? Again?  No wonder a reported 50% of these same technologists have invested millions on their survivalist backup plans.

Blind faith in information technology to preserve democratic principles is just that:  blind.  As I suggested in an older post, because social media has divvied us up according to our brand of outrage, it is helping to hollow out the political center, leaving a vacuum for autocrats (or technocrats?) to fill. It was just a few years ago, when the Snowden story broke, and everyone became all leak-happy, that I criticized my progressive friends for looking in every direction for conspiracies and for putting too much faith in the illusion of transparency afforded by digital technologies.

We forget at our peril how fragile the American deal really is—that it is nothing more than an idea we mutually agree not to destroy, no matter how much we disagree on specific issues.  As I wrote in response to this 360-degree conspiracy view, if we completely lose faith in all functions of government, it means we’ve lost faith in each other, which is the beginning of the end.

Michael Idov, writing for New York Magazine, provides a glimpse into his experiences living and working in Russia as a cautionary tale about what happens when that very fragile agreement does not exist—when trust itself is obliterated. In a description that reminds me of at least cybernetic America over the last several years, Idov writes:

“Russian life, I soon found out, was marked less by fear than by cynicism: the all-pervasive idea that no institution is to be trusted, because no institution is bigger than the avarice of the person in charge. This cynicism, coupled with endless conspiracy theories about everything, was at its core defensive (it’s hard to be disappointed if you expect the worst). But it amounted to defeatism.”

And that’s the underlying message being delivered 140 characters at a time from the Oval Office today—that not one institution can be trusted over the word of a single individual. It is a defeatist and dangerous message, but not one that was written by Donald Trump so much as it was exploited by him. We wrote the narrative ourselves. Feeling let down by the system, we went looking for saviors instead of leaders.

The detrimental effect of social media, feeding the illusion that this technology fosters real transparency, cannot be overstated. The very significant phenomenon that some citizens sincerely believe that a presidential tweet is more honest and informative than the investigative work of a veteran journalist may seem mind-boggling, but it was an inevitable result of disrupting everything. And it is certainly not only Trump’s supporters who’ve bought into this idea that we can all be our own news sources now because the “mainstream” cannot be trusted. To the contrary, every day I see some friend on Facebook shake a head at the White House calling a verifiable fact “fake news,” but in the next instant, share some misleading headline from a questionable source.

We usually talk about the United States in terms of strength and rarely in terms of its fragility.  If that sounds “weak” to some, a reading of the Framers’ own words will show that they understood exactly how fragile the Republic is—that the moment it ceases to be a statesman’s debate about common purpose, we’re toast. But honest debate cannot occur when we have to spend so much time disputing or proving the facts themselves. Twenty years ago, we argued about what to do next, but not nearly so much about what had already happened.

As a general analysis, it is extremely hard to believe that we were not better off with a little less “information” and a little less “transparency.”  Because there is simply no denying the evidence that millions of us—right, left, and center—are operating with our own sets of facts and “alternative facts.” At the same time, it is also questionable whether or not any bi-partisan cooperation could ever happen under the gaze of constant public scrutiny.

It’s a little late now, of course. With the Executive adopting an authoritarian tone, and a party-line vote like we saw in the confirmation of a patently unqualified Secretary of Education, we’ve clearly crossed some threshold in the realm of sincere debate that is neither liberal nor conservative.  But this is what comes from an underlying loss of faith in the system itself and the chaos of the tech-enabled “direct democracy” that is, in many ways, an antidote to corruption but which is also highly vulnerable to corruption itself.

So, mission accomplished. We’re disrupted. “Big League.”  What’s next?

Photo by michaklootwijk

Would Bernie’s supporters let him take on Silicon Valley?

If Bernie Sanders became president and was then tough on the growing power of the Internet industry, would the progressives currently singing his praises still support him?  With this post, I am neither endorsing nor indicting the candidacy of Senator Sanders himself, but as his campaign is built on a theme of holding Wall Street and corporations accountable, I have to wonder if his supporters have contemplated the idea that, as president, if he were to wield Teddy Roosevelt’s sledgehammer, this means Silicon Valley and its capitalists, too.

After all, Google alone is among the largest corporate tax dodgers in the country; it now consistently ranks as in the top ten biggest lobbyists; it is among the federally subsidized; it has wriggled out of anti-trust investigations and paid its way out of criminal indictments for its executives; part of the businesses strategy is based on invading your privacy; the company is racing toward a trillion-dollar valuation without being profitable while its top execs live among an elite fraction of the one percent; it doesn’t employ very many people; and the company built a considerable portion of its market share by exploiting other people’s labor without permission.  Google isn’t the only Internet company to resemble these remarks—they’re just the biggest and most pervasive.

But we’ve seen what happens when the government tries to tell the Internet industry what to do, haven’t we? The industry rallies the masses by scaring the hell out of everyone with messages about free speech and a broken Internet and the end of democracy itself. And you’re right in the middle of a Candy Crush game, dammit! (On a side note, watching this particular campaign season, the idea that the “Information Age” has been a boon to democracy is a very tough sell.  If it really is possible to break the Internet, somebody show me how.)  Okay, back to the point …

I’m not at all surprised that Sanders’s message is popular with a lot of 18-29-year-old progressive voters.  Like the humane antithesis of Trump’s cultish message of intolerance, the Sanders campaign is certainly about being fed up—fed up with the fact that the system is rigged—and this frustration cannot be denied.  But how holistically this political base is willing to look at the rigging is another matter. When Sanders says “Wall Street”, how does that translate among his supporters?  Does it consider the networked economy of the 21st century?

Given the extent to which the sanctity of the Internet is hugely important to this same demographic, is anyone paying attention (including Bernie?) to the fact that the industry which has accelerated wealth consolidation, which has produced paper billionaires out of the most speculative—and often predatory—investments, and which evangelizes an ethos of operating above the rule of law is led by Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Uber, Spotify, etc.  Like it or not, many of the same people who say they want a guy like Sanders to take the fight to Wall Street are trapped in a dichotomy in which simply sharing that message on social media is telling Wall Street to keep doing exactly what it’s doing. Or consider another example …

With an infusion this January of $2 billion in private equity from China, Uber is now valued at over $60 billion, making it bigger on paper than Dow Chemical, General Motors, or Time Warner.  Although there are many drivers currently operating, the company technically employs almost nobody, and it has recently invested some of its VC money in the future of driverless cars.  In fact, in recent announcements, Uber founder Travis Kalanick has stated that if they can eliminate the driver altogether, the price of using services like Uber will become cheaper than owning a car. In theory, he may be right; but that statement alone implies a dramatic, multi-decade transformation to our economy and our infrastructure. This may include ground-transportation services consolidated down to just one or two dominant companies by the same mechanisms that enabled Amazon to become the category killer in product fulfillment. But what exactly do we think that sixty-billion-dollar speculation is about, a ride-hailing service? Yeah. So, when Bernie says he wants to tax Wall Street and pay for infrastructure, how does the current capitalist bet on Uber’s future change that conversation?  We’ll “tax” Wall Street to pay for a public subsidy of a ground-transportation paradigm that is still owned by the 1%?

What the tech-utopian promise and the Sanders campaign have in common is that they both reflect frustration with the status quo, and both will frame issues in the language of democratization; but where the agendas differ is considerable and seems to highlight the two opposing streams in which the millennial generation in particular is standing.  Sanders voters want to make college free and healthcare more affordable while the Internet industry wants to make doctors and professors, to a certain extent, obsolete.  Sanders voters want to level the playing field while the Internet industry wants to own the field, the ball, the bat, and the photos you took while you were playing.  Sanders voters want to make America less corporate, the Internet industry is the ultimate corporatization (see networking) of everything.  Sanders voters talk about American jobs while the tech-utopian’s rhetoric has confused the mantra of “disruption” with Schumpeter’s creative destruction.  Sanders voters cannot possibly say they want any president to go after Wall Street today and not include the hugely speculative bets on the technological future this same constituency says it wants in the palm of its hand.

It’s not that we cannot or should not have the best future technology can provide, but if a Bernie Sanders (or even Hillary Clinton) were to take this economic agenda to the doorstep of Silicon Valley, and that industry responds with its standard barrage of messages that the Internet and our rights are “under attack”, will this segment of the electorate keep faith with its stated mission, or will they get fooled again?

app shoot

Photo by Photo-Dave
Photo by Photo-Dave

So, if your teenager turns out to be a tech savant who builds an app that ranks in the top ten on iTunes, are you going to let him drop out of school to become an entrepreneur?

About fifteen years ago, when my eldest was just starting Kindergarten, I sat with my friend the political operative and made some predictions about education in the U.S.  We figured by the time my son was college age, we’d be in a crisis — namely that college would be so expensive that even the well-to-do would be hard pressed to pay for it, that the market would not support student loan repayments, and that young people would begin to recognize how many of the most successful and interesting people in America were college dropouts.  Most of this has come to pass, and is personified rather neatly in the kid who at least thinks he’s on the road to success with  the next great app.

This NY Times article by Matt Richtel profiles kids between the ages of about 12 and 17 who have already worked in one way or another in the technology industry, usually in the area of app development.  Despite the fact that the field is crowded — there are over one million apps in the iTunes store — app-building is enticing to the young, tech-savvy entrepreneur.  The programming has been made easier thanks to a variety of open-source and pre-fab assets; the app space is cool and fun; and a truly successful app really can make a ton of money.  If a kid has the skills and a decent idea, ordinary school can no more compete for his attention than it can for a kid who’s a sports prodigy or a child TV star.  Add to this the fact that primary education is in a state of disorder and higher education can no longer promise the employability it once did, and of course teenagers are heading to SXSW Interactive to schmooze with their kindred spirits and just maybe meet the VC who will make their dreams come true.

The second Times article, written by computer scientist Yiren Lu offers a view both wide and deep of a social, cultural, and even practical role of age in Silicon Valley.  One point I found particularly interesting is a general divide whereby older engineers tend to be the ones working in more established companies on some very important technologies you’ve never heard of (i.e. faster, better servers) while younger engineers are found in start-ups working on the latest app.  That may seem obvious; we would expect the younger crowd to be less risk-averse and to gravitate toward the “rockstar” part of the business, but Lu points out that the app bubble isn’t necessarily producing great and meaningful technology.  “Why do these smart, quantitatively trained engineers, who could help cure cancer or fix healthcare.gov, want to work for a sexting app?” Lu asks.

Reading these articles together, it’s not hard to think immediately of analogous stories of young athletes, lured away from an education toward fame and wealth only to have that immediate success undermined by some monkey wrench in the works.  This narrative usually involves a cathartic moment when the protagonist says, “There I was at 24 without an education and certainly not enough money to live on the rest of my life.”  And it’s hard to know whether or not the app bubble will spill out similar stories when it bursts. I think it is fair to say, though, that floating in that bubble has some of the same potential drawbacks as other tempting careers that produce a tiny number of stars and  a large number of hopefuls and dropouts.  When focus becomes narrow, all-consuming, and all about money, one can easily imagine a young person with mad coding skills and little life experience developing something utterly hip and utterly useless at the same time.  It’s interesting that in Lu’s article, he mentions the draw to work on a sexting app by way of example and further down in the piece he makes this observation:  “In a place with one of the best gender-ratios in the country for single women, female friends I talk to complain that most of the men are, in fact, not available; they are all busy working on their start-ups, or data-crunching themselves. They have prioritized self-improvement and careers over relationships.”

Lu doesn’t explicitly paint this contradictory image of a loner building a relationship or hook-up app, but he seems generally to believe there is some relevance to what that image implies.  In fact, it reminds me of the last scene in The Social Network in which Mark Zuckerberg, left alone, sends a friend request to his ex-girlfriend and then refreshes the screen several times seeking her acceptance.  Accurate or not, it’s a good piece of dramatic writing by Aaron Sorkin in that he shows us a man who cannot connect with anyone but who has built something revolutionary that connects everyone.  Odds are, of course, many of these kids jumping into the app shoot will discover — as even Zuckerberg I believe is still discovering — that one needs to learn and experience many things in life in order to build technologies that actually serve people.