On Technology, Transformation, and Human Progress
Preventing a Utopian Ethos From Landing Humanity in a Dystopian Ditch
I’ve been told I have a unique perspective.
I see the world through a unique (some might say cracked) lens: formed in a cauldron of disruption caused by technology, then rigorously honed by a Jesuit high school and college education and, today, continues to be polished by an eventful professional career that started on Capitol Hill in the months before and after September 11th and has followed a byzantine course since.
I think what I mean to say is that - much more so than Facebook, Google, or even Apple - I am a product of the Silicon Valley.
I am a native of what is properly called the Santa Clara Valley, and the son of a man who spent the bulk of his career peddling the silicon chips that fueled the growth of an industry that would change the name, along with the nature, of a place that I can remember as still having orchards of Santa Rosa plum trees. Perhaps it is this intimate and innate understanding of the place, as well as the industry, that prevents me from idealizing Silicon Valley - I learned by listening to my father talk about his day at the dinner table just how human the technology industry was. To me, it was never anything mythical nor was I star-struck by names like Wozniak or Jobs - my dad took jelly donuts to one and he couldn't stand the other. They were just regular people in stories recounted at the dinner table.
This heritage - along with a rigorous Jesuit education infused with Judeo-Christian ethics and morality that I received at Bellarmine College Preparatory and, later, Santa Clara University (both bedrock Santa Clara Valley and California institutions) - probably helps drive the skepticism that I have about the promise of technology. A skepticism that's only reinforced by utopian naiveté from the technology industry itself, such as an engineer's assertion that "only code is pure" or a startup breezily assuming some imagined moral high ground by admonishing "don't be evil."
Code is a human construct which makes it corruptible as well as susceptible to the law of unintended consequences. Only a fool intoxicated by a narcotic-strength idealism would so boldly assert that the 1’s and 0’s forming binary code are pure - and with the context that only time can provide, the cynical opportunism underpinning the smug admonishment also served as blinders preventing the startup from avoiding the same types of pitfalls it had presumably been warning against.
Age, experience, and becoming an uncle have begun to raise questions and fuel skepticism about the effects on humankind, and Americans in particular, of:
• technological advancement - led by unquestionably brilliant utopians but with questionable goals and ethics and who have been left to their own devices for far too long (pun intended);
• societal transformation caused by drastic generational changes in behavior and accepted norms and exacerbated by the wholesale abandonment of any sort of commitment to the humanities and liberal arts in education - the subjects that provide the bedrock that most young adults construct their moral and ethical frameworks upon, as well as hone their critical thinking skills.
During the years that Microsoft had its antitrust woes, and before I went to work there, I explained to people in Washington, DC that Microsoft could be seen as an archetype of the technology industry as a whole, which could be explained with a simple, although rather crude, analogy: The industry generally acts like a randy teenager who hasn't been socialized very well - he's young with raging hormones; his ego is fragile so he gets in fights; and, when he encounters a pretty girl, he knows to ask her politely to dinner but lacks sufficient restraint and maturity to ignore the impulse to stick his hand up her dress before they've finished the dessert course. What I was trying to illustrate was that the technology industry was young and, in comparison to older industries like the telecoms or railroads, was still impatient, aggressive, and prone to behaving badly because of immaturity and not from a lack of good intentions.
But over the years, I've watched the same scenario play out with Google, Facebook, Amazon and others. The basic plot line is the same: a baby-faced, earnest yet naive tech visionary outlines a bold vision wrapped in utopian ideals about saving the world, but neglects to tell anyone that their go-to-market strategy looks like it was cribbed from Attila the Hun. Inevitably, in their zeal to change the world, and profit handsomely while doing so, they let the ends justify the means and permit themselves to behave crudely or act unfairly.
When disapproval initially unfolds, the baby-face earnestly reassures everyone - with a hint of impish rebellion creeping into his tone he admits that they made a mistake, but insists that they’ve learned from it, and then promises they won’t ever do it again. But, of course, the only reason baby-face was in a position to behave crudely or act unfairly is because his products are extraordinarily popular and so he is offered absolution, which is thanked by a prompt return to the same old behavior. The next couple of episodes occur, and the impish rebellion transforms into indignation and moral outrage at the unfairness of it all - we simply just don't understand what they are doing and how it will improve our lives if we just look the other way, accept everything they hand out and allow them to maim or destroy anything that stands in their way.
Microsoft was an interesting example - when the Justice Department finally stepped in and sued them, and the company lost, it shattered many of the people who worked there. Even after I went to work there a few years after the day fact, there was still a lingering lack of confidence in the rank-and-file: they had believed they were changing the world and doing the right thing - but the world, and a judge, had disagreed.
My evolving philosophy has its genesis in my realization that my nephews will most likely have a very different understanding of freedom than I do - that, in fact, it isn’t just possible but probable that they will be less free in real terms, than I am today. No nightmare has ever horrified me as much as this thought. We live in an era of great transformation — disruption is reverberating throughout the world on a scale never seen before, but it remains to be seen whether all of this advancement is contributing to human progress, or whether humanity, blinded by utopian visions and fueled by hubris, is rushing towards an abyss.
A dystopian future is not a foregone conclusion. But avoiding it will be difficult and requires bringing a jaundiced eye and a healthy dose of skepticism to scrutiny of this world of technological marvels that we live in if we hope to ensure that technological advancement contributes to human progress.