Silicon States

by Lucie Greene

  She also critiques tech’s “savior mentality.” “It’s a very classical entrepreneurial mindset: ‘We’re going to come in and we’re going to break things and we’re going to disrupt and we’re going to change the world!’ But that’s again a white male engineer, it’s not a black queer female community worker . . . It’s very much geared toward someone who by definition comes from privilege, as opposed to someone who maybe is more excluded from these social institutions that have a lot of capital traditionally.”

  Tompkins-Stange concludes: “There are some really promising innovations, but I think they’re not thinking holistically and systematically enough about including the communities that they are trying to fix problems for. Long-term, I don’t think that’s going to be sustainable.”

  Sustainability is an interesting word, and important, when it comes to Silicon Valley having a bigger civic role. Social good and purpose are great, but when led by a private company they rely on continued, long-term participation, and as we’ve seen from Silicon Valley leaders, they have short attention spans. There’s a danger in having social-good commerce baked in to marketing, as it requires problems themselves being aspirational—if it’s not hashtaggable, it is infinitely less attractive. The impetus to solve, and solve quickly, not only skews problems—it puts Silicon Valley leaders in the cultural role as our rescuers. They will rescue us, but only as long as it suits them.

  Conclusion

  The Future, Maybe

  The year is 2016. The sense of an unfolding existential crisis was almost palpable. Tech enthusiasts from all over the world gathered early in Lisbon at the Web Summit (relocated from Dublin) on Wednesday, November 9, having woken to the news of Donald Trump’s election victory. In search of catharsis, or perhaps some live commentary on events from Silicon Valley’s cognoscenti, they filled the cavernous Center Stage event space. What was intended to be a packed line-up of panels, debates, and keynotes delivered by venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and execs about the future of tech turned into something else: group therapy.

  The audience, composed of young technology and marketing professionals from Europe and around the world, were collectively astonished.

  After days of swooning over robots and AI, a rare moment of visible introspection and humility settled among the leaders onstage. There was a creeping, nagging sense of unease. Had they played a role in the shocking election result? Many fingers in the media were already pointing in Silicon Valley’s direction as pundits globally started talking about a populist movement caused by unemployment due to automation, the rapid growth of the technology sector, and globalization, in addition to the filter bubble and fake news that infused social media channels and woefully distorted the political discourse.

  Many of the Silicon Valley speakers had stayed up all night to watch the results come in. They looked hungover. And, as one after another took to the stage, they visibly squirmed as they came to the realization that technology—in playing a profound role in creating the societal forces that created Trump—was partly responsible for his success.

  Silicon Valley doesn’t like to think badly of itself. And it certainly doesn’t think of itself as aligned with Trump. The election results clashed jarringly with its projected “value system”—broadly likeable, progressive, and neoliberal. This is a carefully honed image, closely intertwined with Silicon Valley’s brands and marketing, but it is increasingly at odds with the hard business interests and the polarizing economic effects of the companies they run (these platforms and algorithms and automation technologies are profitable, and are driving economic disparity through job loss, after all). With the exception of Peter Thiel, many Silicon Valley individuals were vocal (and financial) supporters of Hillary Clinton. The election result had caught them off guard.

  But as the day progressed, and one white male executive after another appeared onstage clad in varying ensembles of luxury sportswear and six-figure statement watches, their shock manifested in the form of live self-reflection.

  It was a poignant moment thinking back to Peter Thiel’s statements at Web Summit 2014 in Dublin, encouraging tech companies in their divine wisdom to push forward and innovate even if it meant breaking a few rules and seeking forgiveness later. They’d done this. They’d innovated, and in so doing had changed our world irreversibly. Would we forgive them for this? Some, of course, had not sought forgiveness at all. Many a fortune had been made from disrupting various sectors (Uber’s rise occurred in this very time period). Many had pushed their companies into new segments, directly flouting regulation but managing to stay in business. More companies had followed by example. This tactic had become the new model to effect change. It became evident that government was simply outmoded and needed to be forcibly overturned. We needed new laws to deal with the pace of innovation. And for almost everyone in the room, the results had been great.

  As the day wore on, reactions onstage ran from muted to outraged. This was best personified by Dave McClure, former founder of 500 Startups, who couldn’t even bear to stick to the line of questioning for his morning panel (McClure has since stepped down amid allegations of sexual harassment; in this moment, however, he was in the throes of pure, outspoken moral outrage). “This whole fucking election was a goddamn travesty,” he fumed. “And we should not sit up here and act like nothing just fucking happened . . . We were robbed, raped, we were lied to, and we were stolen from.”

  CNN’s Laurie Segall, moderating the panel, frantically tried to steer McClure back to the subject at hand. The other panelists were twitching in discomfort as the vast Lisbon indoor stadium, filled with revelers, looked on. After several attempts to interrupt, placate, and take control, she yelped: “What role does the tech industry have to increase civil engagement?”

  “Technology has a role in that we provide communication platforms for the rest of the fucking country,” railed McClure. “And we’re allowing shit to happen just like the cable news networks, just like talk radio. It’s a propaganda medium, and if people aren’t aware of the shit they’re being told; if they’re being told a story of fear, and a story of other; if they’re not understanding that people are trying to use them to get to fucking office, then yes, assholes like Trump are going to take office.” McClure said the tech industry had a responsibility to help avoid such outcomes and called on the audience to stand up in protest. “This shit will not stand! You’ve got to stand up for your rights. Stand up!” Cue audience cheers. The video footage was widely shared and tweeted that day. Several candid YouTube videos have since been posted online. The rant even made it onto SIC Notícias Portuguese cable news.

  Others were more reflective. “It’s very possible to just see news that you want to see,” said Justin Kan, partner at Y Combinator. “As technologists we need to figure out a way to bring people together . . . We disrupt industries. Uber might be a great example. Self-driving cars are coming. That’s going to create a lot of job displacement. What are those people going to do? Are they going to become supporters of the next Donald Trump?”

  McClure added: “We judge the leaders of countries and hold them up to certain value systems, morals, and ethics. But the people who run some of the largest companies probably have larger populations of users than many countries. I don’t think we’re holding those folks up to the same level of standards. Maybe that’s something we need to start looking at.”

  Has this happened? It remains to be seen. But what’s clear is that the 2016 U.S. election and Brexit decision set in motion a collective wake-up call about technology’s growing civic, societal, and economic impact. It’s one that is already a global and unstoppable tidal wave. One that is being driven by consumerism. And one that, in many ways, caught governments sleeping.

  The balance of power between governments and digital behemoths has shifted. Netflix already operates on a global basis, creating original entertainment that moves beyond the antiquated system of regional IP. An elaborate system of loopholes ensures that t
hese companies pay taxes in countries where the rates are most advantageous—but in essence they exist everywhere.

  A global “post-border” life would put tech companies even more firmly in the driver’s seat. Maybe this will inform new systems of governance. As Nick Denton comments: “It doesn’t matter where in the world, we already have a whole bunch of common information, common culture. It’s politics, but by another means . . . People are so fragmented; they no longer have geographical affiliations, but they do have cultural affiliations . . . Maybe you should let people vote on that basis?”

  As we have seen, Peter Thiel and Mark Zuckerberg both supposedly have their eyes on traditional politics. But elsewhere Silicon Valley is reimagining governance totally. “I think that the future of cities and communities is going to be tied to much more communal forms of living and working together,” says Shervin Pishevar. “I’m not talking about socialism or communism or anything like that—I’m talking about the natural course and evolution of capitalism as a living, breathing thing,” he explains, defining capitalism as a market form of self-governance. Consumer constituencies, in other words. Which Uber, Amazon, and Apple effectively already are. “The invisible hand becomes much more visible, and the way it becomes visible is that the movers of our economies, which are really the collective power of the people, become the owners of that future.”

  In a climate where people feel disempowered by democracy and disillusioned by politicians, but able to cause change by signing off from Uber in response to its CEO’s behavior (as many did when he aligned with Donald Trump), it’s easy to see how this could become appealing.

  That’s on the assumption that consumers continue to have control, and that brands need to appease them to retain their patronage. But what happens when tech companies get so big there are no other alternatives? Consumer power of this nature, buying as voting, is predicated on competition and the chance that you might leave one brand for another. It also relies on journalism and media to highlight instances of bad behavior, forcing brands to lose popularity and respond accordingly to retain their appeal. Both of these things are changing quickly with Silicon Valley’s rapid growth—not least because they are the media now. The consumer may be king at Amazon today, but when Amazon is, effectively, everything, Amazon can set the rules.

  All sense of consumer power is in many ways fictional. Renowned futurist Bruce Sterling paints a dystopian picture of a future in which tech brands become societal organisms. In his paper “The Epic Struggle of the Internet of Things,” for example, he describes a fully fledged feudal system where we humans are all the workers for a constant data farm, being spied on relentlessly by the tech overlords. He describes the vision and magic presented by companies around the Internet of Things as a “fairy tale.” He writes, “Politically speaking, the relationship of the reader to the Internet of Things is not democratic. It’s not even capitalistic. It’s a new thing. It’s digital feudalism. People in the Internet of Things are like the woolly livestock of a feudal demesne, grazing under the watchful eye of barons in their hilltop Cloud Castles.”

  And is it really so far away? Already the newest development, along with the Internet of Things (everyday objects connected to the internet), is being superseded by the Internet of Eyes and Ears. These objects have become common lifestyle accessories for the home. Taken together, the Internet of Eyes and Ears is Sterling’s vision on steroids.

  Voice technology, as it continues to advance and understand rare dialects and different voices, will bring yet more people onto the internet. Literacy in far-flung rural regions will not be a problem, Echo will understand. No one will need to type any personal details into anything, to enter their credit card details or ham-fistedly tap to call an Uber wearing gloves on a snowy day. The internet will know and be constantly learning, adapting, and anticipating us. We’ll instruct our car to switch itself on. The internet will be like the air around us. And therefore, so will Silicon Valley technologies. But that could create a psychological shift. Technology in the home until recently has been visible, a braggable status symbol, tangible, and when we interact with it we’re more engaged with our actions. We turn the TV on. We press “send.” When the internet is an invisible mist around us, it will quickly become like the stars of reality TV show Big Brother who forget the cameras are rolling. We are the reality TV show, but it won’t just be our indiscretions in the hot tub that are documented. It will be everything.

  Perhaps it’s unfair to cast Silicon Valley companies in such a Machiavellian light. Their founders probably didn’t even register the collective impact their technologies would have on society as their uses skyrocketed, just the dollars they were making.

  There are the more far-out civic ideas coming from Silicon Valley culture. Seasteading was back in the headlines after the U.S. election, first popularized by the libertarian-minded Silicon Valley–ites. It came to prominence after Peter Thiel invested in the Seasteading Institute, founded by Wayne Gramlich and Patri Friedman in 2008, an organization formed to facilitate the establishment of “autonomous, mobile communities on seaborne platforms” operating in international waters. Friedman, a libertarian activist, is the grandson of Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman and economist Rose Friedman.

  Joe Quirk, coauthor with Friedman of Seasteading: How Ocean Cities Will Change the World, offers an interesting glimpse of what an independent Silicon Valley nation could look like. “We have the technology to solve two of the biggest problems in the world, sea-level change threatening coastal communities and island nations, and the lack of innovation in governance,” says Quirk. “That technology is our floating island project, the prototype of which already floats in the Netherlands in the form of the floating pavilion. The Dutch engineers who partnered with us, DeltaSync/Blue21, designed and built the ecologically sustainable floating pavilion in Rotterdam.” He adds that another project is being developed in French Polynesia. “Native Polynesians are initiating the aquatic age. I am excited by seaweed-based food and algae-based fuel, ventures spearheaded by committed Seasteaders. I am very excited by untethered fish cages that float on the deep ocean with no measurable environmental impact, producing fish that are healthier than wild fish.”

  Quirk believes government as we know it is broken. “Imagine if a monopoly on ice cream offered us two choices every year. You could vote for chocolate or you could vote for vanilla. If 51 percent of people voted for vanilla, everybody got vanilla for four years. Nobody could even imagine pralines and cream. What we have right now is a monopoly on governance for hundreds of millions of people. The way to discover better flavors is to allow innovation to suit individual tastes. The more startup nano-nations we can create on the sea, the faster we will discover better flavors of governance suited to the diversity of human values.”

  Americans, he says, “agree on almost nothing except the fact that the current system doesn’t work. It’s a perfect time to demonstrate that seasteading allows people to stop arguing and start creating alternatives. Seasteading has never been more appealing since monopoly governments have become increasingly inept at rising to the challenges of the twenty-first century—like sea-level change and elections that are as expensive in money as they are in emotional energy. Everybody knows you don’t create mobile phones by working inside Hewlett-Packard, but by breaking away and starting Apple, which is what Steve Wozniak did.”

  But will this benefit us? It depends whether you believe these technology giants have benefited us overall. And whether you believe these rich white guys—who don’t like criticism, are not transparent, and don’t like paying taxes—are all that different from the lot we have now.

  “During the dot-com boom there was tremendous optimism that the internet and the technologies of the late nineties were going to deliver a big dividend in terms of growth. Technologists and macroeconomists were quite well aligned, and so were policy makers,” says Ian Stewart, chief economist and partner at Deloitte. “Policy makers ge
nerally thought we were heading to a world of stronger, more stable growth. The reverse is the case now. If you talk to policy makers or economists, everyone is worried that we are entering ‘secular stagnation.’ So there’s a real disconnect.” (Secular stagnation is defined by the Financial Times as “A condition of negligible or no economic growth in a market-based economy.”)

  In other words, while tech companies framed their activities as an industrial boom that would create long-term growth for everyone, and government supported this, there has been no resulting economic growth. And it looks unlikely there will be any. The material gains are owned by a very small group of people.

  There are those who argue GDP is a flawed measure. And that the sharing economy has made some things free. Airbnb argues it’s created new demand for travel. Uber, new demand for transport. But the macro effects seem undeniable.

  Tech does, of course, employ people. Lots of people. The difference is the structure and the type of employees, and geography is key, explains Stewart: “Companies like Facebook, Apple, or Google are quite big employers, but one general concern is that technology is significantly increasing the rewards for very high levels of skills and education. Technology itself exacerbates the inequality and this opportunity divide . . .”

  As many jobs in the next few decades look set to become automated by technologies being built in Silicon Valley and other innovation hubs around the world, focus is shifting to what work will look like and what jobs there will be. “We have been trying to think about what jobs are automatable in ten or twenty years,” says Thor Berger. “To come up with a further understanding of the limits to human adaptation because, in the end, once there are robots being able to do what humans can do, at some point we will not really need humans to perform work.”