Technology

It was a lot easier to pretend to be a good person when every moral failure you make wasn't broadcast around the world the moment it was discovered. Case and point, look into Bill Gates more. He wasn't always a respectful guy, got caught up in the whole "filthy communists" schtick when the government was investigating his company, advocates for more restrictive control of aid distribution favoring manufacturers more than those he's trying to help, conflicts of interest in his charity, opposing twitters ban of Trump after the insurrection, etc.

That's a fair question.

I think there's many different - and valid - answers to this, depending on how you look at the question.

I guess you could say that society had a stronger immune system back then to eliminate these bad cells. These days, they run way too freely. It's bad, and i'm not sure whether we need a structural reform or whether we can wriggle through this one.

you either die a hero or live long enough to see your self become a villain

People haven't really changed. As always, power corrupts. When the rewards are great enough, it seems people are often enough willing to compromise their integrity.

Thanks for letting me know about Zuck’s behaviour in Hawaii . I was unaware, and should be as a person of the pacific. What a disgusting imperialist culture destroyer and pig. As with many first nation cultures, to Polynesians land is sacred and we are a part of it , maybe guardians of it , more so than any possible ownership over it which is a ridiculous nonsensical concept. Was it not enough that he has compromised international democracy with his extremely dubious contributions to humanity. These sociopathic siliconvalley billionaires really are a scourge. This isn't exclusive to tech though.

As for your overall point, I never particularly admired any corporate characters in tech. All in all I believe the whole sector is overvalued and its importance in life is way over emphasised - the social platforms, and google particularly are overinflated advertising businesses and so of course their self importance has been trumpeted loudly..by themselves and everyone who hitched their giddy advertising budgets to the illusory service provided. Barely as effective as traditional advertising of a century ago. They’ve constructed a panopticon we have trouble looking away from - they even want us to wear goggles to shoe us banners wr cant look away from, to sell us their own useless trinkets.

I believe we should think of the so called tech industry as merely a single component in whatever sector of life it happens to provide a product or service to. Not as a single industry but as a small department of weirdos running say the plumbing (though actual plumbing is arguably more important) with a dingy office in the basement. The cEOs of these are merely the hated bloated bosses of the ones really doing the work. But we should also judge their utility objectively. Sure some aspects are useful in some specific ways. But how useful really? What has the net gain been to humanity of gadget x, or platform Y , or pseudo-sub-industry z? What real energy has it consumed in order to solve what problem(s)? What has the human cost been? They don't think in these terms but we actual humans should.

By the way I work in a tech area, in a small way. I like to think I speak from an angle of some experience with the way I’ve seen some behave, and the irreverant way some customers treat their ‘vendors’. The aura of the tech world is a cult-like bubble which each of these corporations create for themselves , and fledgling startups clamour for, and when clustered as one concept adds up to a massive bubble of hot stinking gas begging to pop.

Unfortunately concepts of value in our economy rarely match their true usefulness. The market is always correct and self corrects, apparently. I look forward to it, but the actual steps forward can be hard to appreciate with all the noise in that hype filled graph.

Also, and this isn’t exclusive to tech, corporations behave like psychopaths due to their narrow goals , profit being the main one, so the characters who float to the top of this septic system of single minded psychopathy tend to be sociopathic due to what they have needed to do to get there. Perhaps for tech this is more a late stage thing, in contrast to our memories of the romantic early days having been more about scrappy boffins soldering things in their parents garage. Now its about whipping up misconceptions in order to raise copious amounts of (mispent) capital in order to make…a smartphone app based ‘platform’ that provides solutions to problems we don't have. So long as the pitch had “A.I” in each sentence.

So yeh, that this environment has resulted in some psychos with a disproportionate amount of money (and therefore political clout) is not a surprise.

To varying degrees if we live in democracies, we are all responsible for creating these monsters. It’s our responsibility to do something about it. Such as raising awareness -as you have done, choosing alternatives, thinking about whether a tech option really is necessary in your life (e.g choosing Amazon over your local independent bookstore), in your workplace (if you have any power here: atleast expressing an alternative method, or solution to your colleagues or managers), and holding tech providers to some level of account at the least with your skepticism. And obviously boycotting what you can. Also remaining hyper aware of the scammy nature of much of the so called sector in its business practices.

I never trusted Tom from myspace as a default insta friend, but he now does seem quaint . But the tech industry is not really an industry and it definitely isn't the world.

The information technology industry in the US has always had a thread of Ayn Rand's philosophy running through it. Some of the people who were part of the computer revolution in the 70s and 80s knew her personally, and thought of themselves as Randian heroes (which is to say, they were narcissists). This is sort of a foundational aspect of the culture of Silicon Valley, so it's always been there.

I highly recommend the documentary All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace by Adam Curtis.

Power corrupts.

Leaders tend towards evil. Early in a technology there’s space for innovators to wind up on top, that allows for some morality agnostic advancement. But as time goes on you find yourself led by those who sought leadership, those whose ruthlessness enabled leadership, and those who’ve been in leadership long enough to have had it damage their morality.

Tech is no longer new and fancy, it’s no longer a space where a few people with an idea can wind up in charge of something valuable. It’s an established industry led by investors and businesspeople, their concerns are not for your benefit and even if they are your experiences are so alien to them that they will try to assist using the frameworks they think in, ones of hierarchy, investment, and other capitalistic and paternalistic world views. But most don’t care, they think they do, they think competition raises everyone, and in the off chance they feel a twinge of guilt about their victims that’s what they tell themselves.

Shareholders want the CEO that gets them more money. If that person doesn't deliver, they don't ask why, they ask when. If they don't like the answer, they get a new CEO. Rinse repeat, here we are.

Except Zuckerberg, of course. He's just evil.

Power corrupts people. On top of that, the capitalist machine isn't satisfied with "just okay" performance. It's infinite growth, or nothing. Once you hit the upper limit of what you can deliver, you start delivering the same, but with a lot of cut corners

The link below isn't the fundamental reason, but I think it helps to explain the shift in mindset. With the best of intentions and a desire to innovate and help people live better...the ersartz movement became corrupted by conspicuous consumption and a "disruptor" capitalist mindset:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Earth_Catalog

Because being an industry leader is more about controlling people rather than whatever it is that your industry produces.

living heck

Once you have acquired a certain amount of money and power a cult shows up at your front door with a clone and a video from the grassy knoll. You get in line, or the clone does... That or something about power corrupting, and absolute power corrupting absolutely.