Robert Harrison under a hail of cyber-bullets: “Children of Silicon Valley” revisited

Ready, aim …

Robert Pogue Harrison‘s “Children of Silicon Valley” is still making waves, as I rather suspected it would when I wrote about his New York Review of Books piece in “Robert Pogue Harrison socks it to Silicon Valley” over here. But now his Silicon Valley critique has leapt across the Atlantic, and is stirring things up in Germany, where it was published in translation by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (here) and in Italy’s Corriere della Sera (alas, no link, just paper). The two newspapers are sometimes called the New York Times of their respective nations.

So what did people have to say? Not much at NYRB, to my surprise; the responses were verbose and not particularly insightful. On the whole, the techie world seemed to come up with the most informed responses, even when one mischaracterized Robert this way: “Those people are really angry, they are frustrated and angry and pissed off that nobody told them that when the nerds reshaped the tools of the world into something they liked better, there [sic] choice to ignore nerds would leave them badly under equipped to live in that world.” Don’t worry, Chuck McM, whoever you are, Robert has just returned from an extended trip to Italy, has a new book coming out soon, and is doing just fine!

Another reply over at Hacker News from dkarapetyan: “Silicon Valley is no longer changing anything. I don’t know if this was ever the case but the reason I started learning about computers and the theory of computation in general was because I saw it as a way of empowering people and giving them a means of achieving their own goals. This is no longer the case. I see very few companies that are using technology with that intention or building something with that goal in mind. All I see are ways of tricking people into clicking on ads or tricking them into doing free work by giving them tokens, e.g. Yelp. This isn’t to say that technologists are entirely to blame but they played a large role in disempowering an entire generation by giving them gimped tools that were meant more for control than empowerment. Why the hell do I need to know what ‘rooting’ a device means if I want to fully utilize all its capabilities. What is the point of locking down a general purpose computing machine if not for control.”

Are we becoming … boring?

Countering one reader’s claim that “Universal mobile connectivity is huge. Instant access to the world’s information is huge. Instant access to each other is huge,” dkarapetyan wrote again: “Instant access to each other we’ve basically had since email and text messaging and that hasn’t changed. What has changed is business capitalizing on those connections to make money, i.e. Zuckerberg repackaging the internet as Facebook. I don’t really know why you say geolocation is huge. I like my GPS but I can get around just fine without it. It might be huge in terms of government’s ability to spy on me though. Maybe I’m a little too cynical but none of what you brought up changes the fact that all the tools and services we make available to people are more a means of oppression and control than they are as a lever that they can use to move the world. Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, etc. are all toys for teenagers. Google and other mega corps are information silos with secretive operations and basically black boxes that print money.”

“Technology should be used to distribute power and wealth but instead it is used more and more every day to concentrate it in fewer and fewer hands. Financial sector you mentioned being an excellent example of such use.”

Over at Union Square Ventures, Nick Grossman considered Robert’s remark, “Our silicon age, which sees no glory in maintenance, but only in transformation and disruption…” He wrote: “That one makes me think. On the one hand, it’s true – disruptive innovation is about abandoning the idea of fixing/maintenance in favor of building new. On the other hand, the ‘architecture of the internet’ is extraordinarily maintenance-friendly – layering and open protocols make it possible to swap out/fix/improve the components of the network like never before.” He doesn’t get it. He is thinking of software, not civilization, and thinking in terms of months and not years, let alone decades and centuries.

Is it a good witch, or a bad witch?

Robert had written, “Becoming a boring human being is the fate of most people who keep the tech economy’s lights burning deep into the night. These industries may be among the most vibrant and dynamic in the world, yet those inside the hive are among the most tedious people in the room, endlessly plugging into their prosthetic devices.” The responses from people who countered that they knew “lively,” “articulate,” “interesting” computer folks with “hobbies” are disquieting. I was struck by the lack of metaphysical aspiration.

Many no longer seem to know what a profound person looks and sounds like. I’ve been honored to know a handful, but from the responses I’ve read, I get the feeling that most people haven’t met any. By which I mean the people who have changed the course of my life, not merely entertained me. I hesitate to elaborate, because I feel like I’m speaking in an ancient tongue, as if I were typing these thoughts out in WordStar 3.0 and not in WordPress, or responding to a TV gameshow in archaic Greek. How to define? (“Immoderate soils where the beauty was not so external,/The light less public and the meaning of life/Something more than a mad camp…”) Let’s start with a quality of being, not merely a lists of accomplishments or degrees, and consider wisdom rather than knowledge. Then add a varied mixture of suffering, conscience, self-knowledge, choices and the enduring payment for those choices, all fermented over time, time, time. But that’s only the starter kit. It gets deeper. You won’t find anything like it in the internet chatter.

Belly of the Beast.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 14th, 2014 at 3:29 pm by Cynthia Haven and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.