Morality in Silicon Valley

The rise of the Digital Age

Google leitmotiv: “Do no evil” and “make the world a better place”

When Google went public in 2004, its founders issued a statement detailing the principles that underwrote the firm’s activities. Alongside the injunction to “do no evil” was the desire to “make the world a better place”. They were not alone. When Zynga floated in 2011, the CEO of a company that manufactured such essential online diversions as ‘Farmville’ and ‘Words with Friends’ proclaimed: “Games should do good.

A new kind of billionaires?

However, as the toys became more familiar, the billionaires richer, their pronouncements more exclusive, their detachment more acute, their empathy indiscernible, the public has begun to grow sceptical.

These could have been dismissed as the ramblings of a former Dead-head if they were not echoed by members of the Valley’s aristocracy who do not have a Haight-Ashbury past.

• Peter Thiel, for example, founder of PayPal and seed investor in Facebook, expressed alarmingly un-PC views about democracy and the rights of assaulted women, views he retracted before supporting President Trump.
• Greg Gopman, then CEO of AngelHack, wondered on Facebook why “the heart of our city has to be overrun by crazy, homeless, drug dealers, dropouts and trash?”, a query he quickly deleted.
• Balaji Srinivasan, CEO of the Stanford Bitcoin start-up, admitted he feels closer to people in his “Stanford network” wherever they are in the world than to his fellow citizens in California’s Central Valley. In addition, he asserts: “There will be recognition that if we don’t have control of the nation state, we should reduce the nation state’s power over us.”

“Silicon Valley do not need to abide by the rules”

The justification for such an amoral position is ‘progress’. Innovation has become inextricably associated with making the world a ‘better place’, no matter certain innovations – nuclear weapons, sub-machine guns – have probably brought more pain than pleasure.

It has not always been that way

It was not always the case. In the early days of software, back in the dark ages of the eighties and nineties, debate was engaged about the price and purpose of the internet.

The answer was not long arriving. If people bought the products and services on offer, and they were deemed to enhance their quality of life, then by definition the sale and growth of such products became a good in themselves.

Is Technological “progress” for any commercial decision?

Thus the narrative of technological ‘progress’ circumvented the need for morality. The desire to make a ‘better world’ for everyone was justification for any commercial decision. That technology was eroding the opportunities for millions of lower paid and less skilled workers while expanding the wealth gap was deemed irrelevant.

There are evidence that it is not “making the world a better place”

Indeed, there is considerable evidence to the contrary. There are accusations around the exploitation of low-paid labour, indifference to copyright, disregard for piracy, ferocious special-interest lobbying, wobbly corporate governance. Fake news skews elections. Data collection so large only machines can understand it walks hand-in-hand with contempt for individual privacy.

Thinking Big and Small

Their response to criticism has been lethargic at best. Faced with the ‘fake news’ allegations, Mark Zuckerberg initially claimed Facebook was a technology not a media company and therefore could not be expected to arbitrate users’ posts – before admitting it could build better tools.

It is a hope that seems increasingly at odds with the absolutism and monopolistic gigantism of Silicon Valley.

Perhaps it could start by stopping trying ‘to make the world better’ and settling for a more tangible goal, such as ‘making a contribution’. Doctors, nurses, teachers, carers make a contribution, and in so doing make someone’s world better every day.

It is possible the titans of the Valley would be bigger men if they started to think a little smaller.

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