WEBVTT - CZM Rewind: The Tech Industry is a Failure 0:00:00.480 --> 0:00:03.400 Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and you know this is 0:00:03.440 --> 0:00:06.200 you're hearing this because this is running during the week 0:00:06.440 --> 0:00:10.200 that everyone in Gooul Zone media takes off. And here's 0:00:10.240 --> 0:00:12.880 the thing. We don't technically have to work during a 0:00:12.920 --> 0:00:15.240 week for you to get new episodes of stuff. But 0:00:15.600 --> 0:00:18.319 if we just take a week off and then we 0:00:18.480 --> 0:00:21.239 put out new episodes that week, we have to catch 0:00:21.320 --> 0:00:23.840 up at some point, right, like we like, at some 0:00:23.920 --> 0:00:27.360 point those episodes and extra episodes have to continue being made. 0:00:27.520 --> 0:00:30.080 So we're just actually taking this week off. We're not 0:00:30.080 --> 0:00:33.479 going to do anything. We've done this before. This is 0:00:33.520 --> 0:00:35.440 not a new thing for us. There'll be so no 0:00:35.560 --> 0:00:38.040 new episode of Bastards or hood Politics or could happen 0:00:38.040 --> 0:00:40.120 here this week. Well, we will be doing as We've 0:00:40.159 --> 0:00:43.440 asked everyone on the team to pick their old episodes 0:00:43.520 --> 0:00:46.640 of the show that they like and wanted to rehighlight 0:00:46.680 --> 0:00:50.280 to people. So we will be dropping, you know, old 0:00:50.280 --> 0:00:52.600 episodes with kind of you know, this little bit of 0:00:52.640 --> 0:00:55.880 commentary at the start this week. If you think everything's 0:00:56.280 --> 0:00:59.000 a rerun, that's because it is. We're in reruns this week, folks. 0:00:59.040 --> 0:01:02.480 You remember those If you're not not like an old 0:01:02.520 --> 0:01:04.520 piece of shit like me. Maybe you don't remember the 0:01:04.560 --> 0:01:07.440 world in which you know reruns. We're a thing, It's 0:01:07.480 --> 0:01:09.959 the thing they used to do on TV because of 0:01:10.000 --> 0:01:13.920 the same basic reasons. People needing, needing a break, but 0:01:14.040 --> 0:01:16.959 something something needing to go out to fill the gaping 0:01:17.120 --> 0:01:20.560 maw of content that is the Internet. It's eternal hunger, 0:01:20.600 --> 0:01:24.600 the great devour that is that is our collective consciousness 0:01:24.640 --> 0:01:27.919 as a species. So anyway, here's an episode I wrote 0:01:28.240 --> 0:01:31.320 last year about the tech industry and why it is 0:01:31.560 --> 0:01:37.440 fundamentally a failure despite what would seem to be numerous accomplishments. 0:01:37.560 --> 0:01:39.600 So check that out and then, I don't know, maybe 0:01:39.680 --> 0:01:42.280 go watch the show Halt and Catch Fire. That'll be 0:01:42.400 --> 0:01:50.560 that'll be a good time for you. Here it is. Hey, everybody, 0:01:50.680 --> 0:01:53.680 Robert Evans here and welcome to It could happen here. 0:01:54.000 --> 0:01:56.760 You know. When we started the show, when I did 0:01:56.800 --> 0:01:59.080 the first season of it, you know, the one about 0:01:59.120 --> 0:02:02.560 all the civil wars back in twenty nineteen, this was 0:02:02.640 --> 0:02:05.840 basically a place for me to write long essays explaining 0:02:05.880 --> 0:02:08.959 my vision of the future and the present, and people 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:11.160 seem to like that a lot. We did a little 0:02:11.160 --> 0:02:14.040 bit of that at the start of this new Eternal 0:02:14.480 --> 0:02:18.160 daily season of the show, but obviously over the last 0:02:18.320 --> 0:02:21.160 year or so, it's morphed into something very different and 0:02:21.200 --> 0:02:24.920 something wonderful and successful, and that's brought a lot of 0:02:25.000 --> 0:02:29.280 new voices, or at least voices people maybe hadn't heard 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:31.720 from as much out in front of the audience, and 0:02:31.760 --> 0:02:34.000 I've been really happy about that. But what I also 0:02:34.120 --> 0:02:37.840 haven't been doing is writing any more essays about the 0:02:37.840 --> 0:02:41.400 world and how fucked up shit is, because you know, 0:02:41.480 --> 0:02:45.120 I've been managing a bunch of stuff and there's been 0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:47.440 a lot of work to do. But I like doing 0:02:47.480 --> 0:02:49.760 that stuff, and I think you people like it, So 0:02:50.360 --> 0:02:52.480 I'm going to try to do more of that. And 0:02:52.520 --> 0:02:54.920 I wanted to kind of start by talking a little 0:02:54.919 --> 0:02:58.080 bit about Silicon Valley, and I'm going to say something 0:02:58.400 --> 0:02:59.920 at the start of this essay that a lot of 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:03.040 people are probably instinctively going to want to disagree with, 0:03:03.080 --> 0:03:06.760 which is that Silicon Valley and the tech industry have 0:03:06.880 --> 0:03:10.160 been gigantic failures by every metric that matters. They have 0:03:10.320 --> 0:03:14.040 made life comprehensively worse for humanity, and there is no 0:03:14.280 --> 0:03:17.920 real fact based counter argument to that statement. This is 0:03:17.919 --> 0:03:19.760 a hard pill for people to swallow. I'm sure, a 0:03:19.760 --> 0:03:21.919 lot of folks are frustrated in me for saying it 0:03:22.000 --> 0:03:25.360 right now and are thinking of counter arguments. Most people 0:03:25.440 --> 0:03:28.640 today are critical of the tech industry, obviously, particularly major 0:03:28.680 --> 0:03:31.760 social media companies, but they still tend to acknowledge the 0:03:31.800 --> 0:03:35.040 tremendous wealth created by Silicon Valley, as if there's some 0:03:35.080 --> 0:03:37.640 sort of inherent value to that behind a number on 0:03:37.680 --> 0:03:42.400 a spreadsheet. Collectively, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Google, the 0:03:42.440 --> 0:03:45.640 so called Big Five had a seven point five trillion 0:03:45.680 --> 0:03:49.000 dollar market cap in twenty twenty. Every person listening to 0:03:49.040 --> 0:03:51.440 this keeps a device in their pocket made by or 0:03:51.520 --> 0:03:54.040 using the software of one or more of these companies, 0:03:54.480 --> 0:03:56.840 And so when people want to make the counter argument 0:03:56.920 --> 0:03:59.280 to what I just said, they'll tend to point out 0:03:59.400 --> 0:04:02.280 some version of this. Yeah, companies like Facebook have done 0:04:02.320 --> 0:04:04.440 bad things, but the Internet still a tool for good. 0:04:04.480 --> 0:04:07.760 It connects people, YadA, YadA YadA. Smartphones empower us. You know, 0:04:07.840 --> 0:04:10.880 there's all these positive things about the internet, to which 0:04:10.920 --> 0:04:13.800 I will say, present me with your fucking evidence that 0:04:13.800 --> 0:04:17.440 that has mattered for people really in terms that actually 0:04:17.720 --> 0:04:21.599 inaggregate improve their lives. I will show you my arguments 0:04:21.600 --> 0:04:24.400 to the contrary. In the period of time from Harry 0:04:24.440 --> 0:04:27.680 Truman's election to the end of the Nixon administration, American 0:04:27.720 --> 0:04:30.680 productivity on a per capita basis increased at a faster 0:04:30.800 --> 0:04:32.960 rate than it did at any other point in history. 0:04:33.560 --> 0:04:37.680 But then something happened. From nineteen seventy three to twenty thirteen, 0:04:37.880 --> 0:04:40.840 income growth was eighty percent slower than it had been 0:04:40.839 --> 0:04:44.240 in the previous three decades. If productivity had continued to 0:04:44.279 --> 0:04:46.640 grow at the same rate from nineteen seventy three to 0:04:46.680 --> 0:04:49.600 twenty thirteen as it did from nineteen forty six to 0:04:49.680 --> 0:04:53.120 nineteen seventy three, the economy in twenty thirteen would have 0:04:53.160 --> 0:04:57.160 been sixty percent larger than it actually was. Now. I'm 0:04:57.160 --> 0:04:59.680 gonna guess a decent number of the people listening to 0:04:59.720 --> 0:05:02.240 this grew up watching The Jetsons. I know I did, 0:05:02.240 --> 0:05:03.880 and for the most part it was a silly, pretty 0:05:03.880 --> 0:05:06.680 harmless animated show. But at the center of it was 0:05:06.720 --> 0:05:09.680 a dream about the future that seems unfathomable in light 0:05:09.680 --> 0:05:12.760 of current events. George Jetson, who is in the show 0:05:12.800 --> 0:05:15.960 a pretty normal working class guy, worked three hours a 0:05:16.040 --> 0:05:17.919 day for three days a week. One of the running 0:05:17.960 --> 0:05:20.839 jokes in the show is that he considered himself overworked 0:05:20.880 --> 0:05:25.640 despite this pretty idyllic schedule. Now, this was never particularly 0:05:25.680 --> 0:05:27.719 a focus of the show. It was just kind of 0:05:27.720 --> 0:05:30.279 something that was mentioned from time to time. And that's 0:05:30.279 --> 0:05:33.000 because the idea that a workweek might just be nine 0:05:33.000 --> 0:05:36.039 hours in the future wasn't a joke. This was the 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:40.000 direction futurists in the nineteen sixties, looking at that surge 0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:42.400 in productivity I just mentioned, and all of the middle 0:05:42.440 --> 0:05:44.560 class wealth that had been created from the forties through 0:05:44.600 --> 0:05:46.920 the early sixties, this is the direction they saw as 0:05:46.960 --> 0:05:49.760 heading in Around a decade ago, in a period that 0:05:49.880 --> 0:05:53.920 was still significantly more optimistic than our current age. The Atlantics, 0:05:53.960 --> 0:05:56.520 Alexis Madrigal went on a reading spree of some early 0:05:56.600 --> 0:06:01.839 twentieth century futurist novels. His conclusion was this quote. Technological 0:06:01.839 --> 0:06:04.960 optimists sold the world on automation by telling people it 0:06:05.000 --> 0:06:08.159 would create unimaginable amounts of leisure for them. The big 0:06:08.240 --> 0:06:10.480 question for the workers of the twenty first century would 0:06:10.480 --> 0:06:14.359 be how to spend their copious amounts of free time. Now, 0:06:14.720 --> 0:06:17.279 the future we've actually gotten has given us the opposite 0:06:17.279 --> 0:06:19.520 of this stream to try and cover up the rank 0:06:19.560 --> 0:06:22.919 and rampant ways modern technology has failed humanity. Think tanks 0:06:22.960 --> 0:06:26.280 funded by venture capitalists and tech gurus produce an endless 0:06:26.320 --> 0:06:30.240 stream of identical futurist thinker types who write columns about 0:06:30.279 --> 0:06:33.080 how the world is actually better today than it's ever been. 0:06:33.720 --> 0:06:35.880 A good example of this would be this June twenty 0:06:35.920 --> 0:06:39.719 twenty Forbes column by Rob Asgar titled the World's getting better. 0:06:39.880 --> 0:06:42.599 Here's why your brain can't believe it. It opens with 0:06:42.640 --> 0:06:45.840 this paragraph, Life has improved for most people around the 0:06:45.839 --> 0:06:49.560 world over the past generation temporary pandemics aside. The rub 0:06:49.600 --> 0:06:51.719 is that you can't get anyone to believe the good news, 0:06:51.839 --> 0:06:54.400 and the result is a toxic political environment and the 0:06:54.400 --> 0:06:57.400 potential collapse of timocratic norms if too few people feel 0:06:57.400 --> 0:07:00.840 that a stressed system is worth saving. Now, I might 0:07:00.880 --> 0:07:03.719 point out, for example, that if people don't actually feel 0:07:03.760 --> 0:07:07.760 like the system's good, perhaps it's not really working well. 0:07:08.040 --> 0:07:11.120 There's a number of counter arguments you can make to this. Now. 0:07:11.200 --> 0:07:13.640 Two years later, this again was written in June of 0:07:13.680 --> 0:07:16.320 twenty twenty, we've got a massive war in Europe. People 0:07:16.320 --> 0:07:19.400 are worried about nuclear warfare. As a result of that, Again, 0:07:19.720 --> 0:07:22.880 we've got a degradation of democracy worldwide that's continued to 0:07:22.920 --> 0:07:25.160 pace from where it was in twenty twenty. We've got 0:07:25.200 --> 0:07:28.040 soaring inequality, we've got inflation the likes of which a 0:07:28.040 --> 0:07:31.000 lot of people alive have never seen, myself included prior 0:07:31.040 --> 0:07:34.680 to this point, and we still have a pandemic. So 0:07:34.720 --> 0:07:37.560 it's clear that Rob is at least not as smart 0:07:37.560 --> 0:07:39.440 as he thinks he is, which is what I would 0:07:39.440 --> 0:07:42.000 say about everyone who makes versions of the same claim 0:07:42.000 --> 0:07:44.480 that he was making. Now, this doesn't mean I'm saying 0:07:44.480 --> 0:07:46.520 that life is worse now than it was at some 0:07:46.560 --> 0:07:49.320 imagined prelapsarian version of the past. I actually think that's 0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:51.200 kind of a useless way to think about the past 0:07:51.200 --> 0:07:53.640 and the future. There's different things people would have preferred. 0:07:53.640 --> 0:07:56.400 There's things that are objectively better, there's things that are 0:07:56.440 --> 0:07:59.400 objectively and debatably worse. You know that it's hard to 0:07:59.680 --> 0:08:02.200 make those kind of claims about history, especially when they 0:08:02.200 --> 0:08:05.320 often rely on saying, well, x amount more people have 0:08:05.320 --> 0:08:08.240 been pulled out of poverty, and the question to that is, well, 0:08:08.480 --> 0:08:11.600 I don't know. Before colonization of Africa, would you say 0:08:11.720 --> 0:08:14.360 all of those people in what became the colonized parts 0:08:14.400 --> 0:08:17.920 of Africa were in poverty or were they simply not 0:08:18.040 --> 0:08:21.800 part of a system that measures poverty and anyway whatever. 0:08:21.840 --> 0:08:24.520 We can go on and on about that. My point 0:08:24.560 --> 0:08:27.080 is that the metrics these people use to claim the 0:08:27.120 --> 0:08:29.920 success of our current system to talk about how wonderful 0:08:29.960 --> 0:08:33.600 things are today are constantly shifting, and they're widely arbitrary. 0:08:34.000 --> 0:08:37.160 The same year Rob wrote his stupid column, a NRC 0:08:37.280 --> 0:08:40.240 study showed that Americans self reported being happy at the 0:08:40.320 --> 0:08:44.160 lowest levels in fifty years. You can quote juke statistics 0:08:44.200 --> 0:08:46.960 about wealthare access to luxury goods all you want. But 0:08:47.040 --> 0:08:49.160 the modern world, in the post two thousand and eight 0:08:49.200 --> 0:08:51.480 financial crash economy, all of which was built in the 0:08:51.480 --> 0:08:55.840 shade of the tech industry, is making people miserable now. 0:08:55.880 --> 0:08:59.160 Happiness is obviously not a perfect measure of progress either. 0:08:59.280 --> 0:09:02.800 Self reporting always dicey, but things like the consumer price 0:09:02.840 --> 0:09:05.320 index and per capita income, which are often used by 0:09:05.320 --> 0:09:08.040 folks on the optimist side, are also juked and jiggered 0:09:08.080 --> 0:09:10.600 to hell and back. So to provide a bit more 0:09:10.600 --> 0:09:12.679 of an international scale, I'm going to quote from the 0:09:12.720 --> 0:09:17.360 Berkeley University's Greater Good magazine quote release annually on the 0:09:17.400 --> 0:09:20.560 International Day of Happiness. The World Happiness Report ranks countries 0:09:20.600 --> 0:09:23.080 based on their life satisfaction. In the Gallop World Poll, 0:09:23.480 --> 0:09:25.719 residents rate how satisfied they are with their lives in 0:09:25.800 --> 0:09:28.040 a scale of zero to ten, from the worst possible 0:09:28.080 --> 0:09:30.800 life to the best possible life. This year's report also 0:09:30.840 --> 0:09:33.640 analyzes how global happiness has changed over time, based on 0:09:33.720 --> 0:09:36.320 data stretching back to two thousand and five. One trend 0:09:36.400 --> 0:09:40.080 is very clear. Negative feelings, worries, sadness, and anger have 0:09:40.160 --> 0:09:42.720 been rising around the world, up by twenty seven percent 0:09:42.720 --> 0:09:46.640 from twenty ten to twenty eighteen. The authors also found 0:09:46.640 --> 0:09:49.680 troubling trends and happiness in equality, which is the psychological 0:09:49.679 --> 0:09:53.480 parallel to income inequality, how much individuals in society differ 0:09:53.520 --> 0:09:56.160 in how satisfied they are with life. Since two thousand 0:09:56.160 --> 0:09:59.520 and seven, happiness inequality has been rising within countries, meaning 0:09:59.520 --> 0:10:01.760 that the gap between the unhappy and the happy has 0:10:01.760 --> 0:10:05.319 been getting wider. This trend is particularly strong in Latin America, 0:10:05.360 --> 0:10:10.200 Asia and Sub Saharan Africa. And this is kind of 0:10:10.200 --> 0:10:12.760 getting it. I think, what is an incredibly important point, 0:10:12.760 --> 0:10:15.000 for one thing, if you want to look at how 0:10:15.080 --> 0:10:19.480 people have self reported their unhappiness rising, This massive recent 0:10:19.559 --> 0:10:22.240 surge and unhappiness occurs almost at exactly the period of 0:10:22.280 --> 0:10:25.520 time that the smartphone takes off and becomes ubiquitous. And 0:10:25.559 --> 0:10:28.280 the smartphone is such a bafflingly useful device, I would 0:10:28.320 --> 0:10:30.360 never want to give mine up as a thing that 0:10:30.440 --> 0:10:33.359 I had access to. And the Internet is an incredibly 0:10:33.360 --> 0:10:35.760 powerful tool. I wouldn't want to give the Internet up either. 0:10:36.520 --> 0:10:41.400 But the usefulness and the undoubtable brilliance behind these products 0:10:41.760 --> 0:10:44.839 makes it seem inconceivable to argue that they haven't made 0:10:44.920 --> 0:10:47.199 us better at accomplishing the things that matter to us. 0:10:47.600 --> 0:10:50.480 But the evidence on this is pretty clear. I want 0:10:50.520 --> 0:10:52.240 to quote now from a write up in The Atlantic. 0:10:53.559 --> 0:10:56.000 No matter how aggressively you torture the numbers, the computer 0:10:56.080 --> 0:10:58.600 age has coincided with a decline in the rate of 0:10:58.640 --> 0:11:02.400 economic growth. When Chad Siverson, an economist at the University 0:11:02.440 --> 0:11:05.560 of Chicago's Business School, looked at the question of missing growth, 0:11:05.640 --> 0:11:08.640 he found that the productivity slowdown has reduced GDP by 0:11:08.640 --> 0:11:12.640 two point seven trillion dollars since two thousand four. Americans 0:11:12.679 --> 0:11:15.120 may love their smartphones, but all those free apps aren't 0:11:15.160 --> 0:11:18.400 worth trillions of dollars. The physical world of the city, 0:11:18.520 --> 0:11:21.400 the glow of electric powered lights, the rumble of automobiles, 0:11:21.400 --> 0:11:24.000 the roar of airplanes overhead on subways below is a 0:11:24.040 --> 0:11:27.240 product of late nineteenth century and early twentieth century invention. 0:11:27.679 --> 0:11:31.640 The physical environment feels depressingly finished. The bulk of innovation 0:11:31.760 --> 0:11:35.160 has been shunted into the invisible realm of bytes and code. 0:11:35.200 --> 0:11:38.280 All of that code, technology advocates argue, has increased human 0:11:38.400 --> 0:11:41.240 ingenuity by allowing individuals to tinker, talk, and trade with 0:11:41.320 --> 0:11:45.400 unprecedented ease. This certainly feels true. Who could dispute the 0:11:45.400 --> 0:11:47.720 fact that it's easier than ever to record music, market 0:11:47.800 --> 0:11:50.600 a video game, or publish an essay. But by most measures, 0:11:50.679 --> 0:11:54.959 individual innovation is in decline. In twenty fifteen, Americans were 0:11:55.000 --> 0:11:56.959 far less likely to start a company than they were 0:11:56.960 --> 0:11:59.920 in the nineteen eighties. According to the economist Tyler Coha, 0:12:00.360 --> 0:12:03.280 the spread of broadband technology has corresponded with a drop 0:12:03.280 --> 0:12:06.360 off and entrepreneurial activity in almost every city and in 0:12:06.360 --> 0:12:18.680 almost every industry. Now you might think from all this 0:12:18.760 --> 0:12:21.720 that I'm mount ahead into some sort of technodoomer, anti 0:12:21.760 --> 0:12:25.000 siev primitivist rant. Here I'm not. Perhaps I should, but 0:12:25.040 --> 0:12:27.800 I'm not. I am a person who loves technology. I 0:12:27.840 --> 0:12:30.400 got my start as a journalist as a tech journalist. 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:34.120 I've joyously traveled the world for years visiting conventions looking 0:12:34.160 --> 0:12:35.720 at new gadgets, and a lot of this was in 0:12:35.720 --> 0:12:39.160 that pretty wondrous period if you're a gadget nerd from 0:12:39.160 --> 0:12:41.439 two thousand and eight to twenty eleven, where there were 0:12:41.440 --> 0:12:45.200 there's these amazing, new, weird sci fi gadgets dropping every 0:12:45.200 --> 0:12:47.800 single week, stuff that you'd grown up watching in like 0:12:47.840 --> 0:12:50.559 Star Trek the next generation suddenly getting mailed to your 0:12:50.559 --> 0:12:53.280 door for you to test out. I tested hundreds of 0:12:53.320 --> 0:12:55.959 tablets and smart gadgets in that timeframe, and there's some 0:12:56.040 --> 0:12:58.959 really great products that came out from that period. Bluetooth 0:12:59.000 --> 0:13:01.679 speakers are wonderful. Lot of people, including me, use them 0:13:01.720 --> 0:13:04.360 happily on a daily basis. But when it comes to 0:13:04.480 --> 0:13:08.320 legitimately life changing applications of technology that's come to us 0:13:08.320 --> 0:13:11.200 in the last fifteen years or so, I can really 0:13:11.200 --> 0:13:14.160 only think of three things. Number one is the ability 0:13:14.200 --> 0:13:17.680 to navigate by GPS basically everywhere. Number two is the 0:13:17.720 --> 0:13:20.640 ability to be in constant contact with people around the world. 0:13:20.840 --> 0:13:23.320 And number three is the ability to store a shitload 0:13:23.320 --> 0:13:27.600 of media on a portable device. So I'm not anti technology, 0:13:27.640 --> 0:13:29.600 nor am I saying that big tech doesn't make things 0:13:29.600 --> 0:13:31.880 that are cool or useful. Nor am I saying we 0:13:31.880 --> 0:13:34.480 should get rid of this stuff. The point I'm making 0:13:34.600 --> 0:13:37.800 is that viewed at thirty thousand feet, the tech industry 0:13:37.840 --> 0:13:41.640 has produced very little of quantifiable value to the human race, 0:13:41.920 --> 0:13:45.640 and it has caused unfathomable harm at the same time. Now, 0:13:45.679 --> 0:13:48.400 in my opinion, this has nothing, or at least fairly 0:13:48.400 --> 0:13:51.880 little to do with how the technology inherently works, and 0:13:52.000 --> 0:13:55.160 instead has everything to do with the ideology behind the 0:13:55.160 --> 0:13:58.880 people who developed and who continue to marshal that technology. 0:13:59.520 --> 0:14:01.839 In nineteen ninety five, two of the smartest guys in 0:14:01.880 --> 0:14:05.800 the twentieth century by my estimation, Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, 0:14:06.080 --> 0:14:08.920 wrote an essay about the ideology that animated the men 0:14:08.920 --> 0:14:12.000 who had come to dominate the twenty first century tech industry. 0:14:12.480 --> 0:14:16.120 They titled their essay the Californian Ideology, and I think 0:14:16.120 --> 0:14:17.920 it still counts as one of the three or four 0:14:18.000 --> 0:14:21.640 most incisive accurate essays of that century. The gist of 0:14:21.680 --> 0:14:23.840 the idea was that as the first wave of the 0:14:23.840 --> 0:14:26.520 digital boom started to hit in the mid nineteen nineties, 0:14:26.760 --> 0:14:28.880 the thinkers behind it were fueled by a mix of 0:14:29.000 --> 0:14:33.720 left wing by a mix of left wing egalitarian, often 0:14:33.800 --> 0:14:37.040 anti statist beliefs that got wetted to right wing free 0:14:37.040 --> 0:14:41.920 market fundamentalist libertarian ideology and created this deeply toxic way 0:14:41.960 --> 0:14:44.760 of thinking about the future. You can see this in 0:14:44.800 --> 0:14:47.680 the story of guys like Steve Wozniak, the inventor of 0:14:47.680 --> 0:14:50.720 the personal computer, who was also a former phone freaker. 0:14:50.720 --> 0:14:53.160 He committed federal crimes as a kid, hacking the phone 0:14:53.160 --> 0:14:57.000 system primarily because fuck the man. But then when he's 0:14:57.000 --> 0:14:59.080 a young man, the Waws hooks up with a guy 0:14:59.120 --> 0:15:02.280 named Steve Job, and Jobs is a brilliant but heartless 0:15:02.280 --> 0:15:05.800 con man who cares about nothing but market dominance. Jobs 0:15:05.840 --> 0:15:09.040 recognizes the naive brilliance of Steve Wosniak, and he turns 0:15:09.040 --> 0:15:11.440 it into an engine for wealth creation. At one point, 0:15:11.600 --> 0:15:14.480 he steals money that Wosniak was owed for a project 0:15:14.520 --> 0:15:17.400 that they took on together, money Wosniak probably would have 0:15:17.440 --> 0:15:19.240 just given him if he'd asked, and he used it 0:15:19.320 --> 0:15:23.240 secretly to fund their business, which became Apple. In their essay, 0:15:23.280 --> 0:15:25.440 Cameron and Barbara, who are much better writers than I, 0:15:25.560 --> 0:15:29.840 described the Californian ideology this way. The Californian ideology is 0:15:29.880 --> 0:15:33.960 a mix of cybernetics, free market economics, and counterculture libertarianism, 0:15:34.240 --> 0:15:37.120 and is promulgated by magazines such as Wired and Mondo 0:15:37.200 --> 0:15:39.440 two thousand and preached in the books of Stuart Brand, 0:15:39.560 --> 0:15:42.440 Kevin Kelly, and others. The new faith has been embraced 0:15:42.440 --> 0:15:46.479 by computer nerds, slacker students, thirty sethter capitalists, hip academics, 0:15:46.680 --> 0:15:51.440 futurist bureaucrats, and even by the President of the USA himself. Now, 0:15:52.400 --> 0:15:54.680 the tech industry as we know it got its start 0:15:54.760 --> 0:15:57.960 courtesy of government money. Everyone knows that the first version 0:15:57.960 --> 0:16:00.000 of the Internet was developed as part of a Defense 0:16:00.240 --> 0:16:03.400 Department project, But the entire computer industry, all of the 0:16:03.400 --> 0:16:05.920 coders and engineers who would form the first generation of 0:16:05.960 --> 0:16:09.680 Sillincon Valley profit engines, all these guys got their start 0:16:09.800 --> 0:16:13.120 working for or as defense contractors. When the US pulled 0:16:13.120 --> 0:16:15.240 out of Vietnam, thousands of these people were left out 0:16:15.280 --> 0:16:16.800 of jobs and they were forced to move into the 0:16:16.800 --> 0:16:20.120 private sector. Everything worthwhile that's come out of big tech 0:16:20.160 --> 0:16:22.960 has involved a titanic amount of public funding one way 0:16:23.040 --> 0:16:25.080 or the other. I'm going to quote from that essay again. 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:28.840 Almost every major technological advance of the last two hundred 0:16:28.880 --> 0:16:31.160 years has taken place with the aid of large amounts 0:16:31.200 --> 0:16:33.720 of public money and under a good deal of government influence. 0:16:34.040 --> 0:16:36.320 The technologies of the computer in the net were invented 0:16:36.320 --> 0:16:39.080 with the aid of massive state subsidies. For example, the 0:16:39.120 --> 0:16:42.640 first difference Engine project received a British government grant of 0:16:42.680 --> 0:16:45.960 five hundred and seventeen four hundred and seventy pounds a 0:16:46.000 --> 0:16:49.560 small fortune in eighteen thirty four. From Colossus to ed VAC, 0:16:49.600 --> 0:16:53.200 from flight simulators to virtual reality, the development of computing 0:16:53.240 --> 0:16:56.280 has depended at key moments on public research handouts or 0:16:56.320 --> 0:17:00.360 fat contracts with public agencies. The IBM Corporation the first 0:17:00.360 --> 0:17:03.520 programmable digital computer only after it was requested to do 0:17:03.600 --> 0:17:06.400 so by the US Defense Department during the Korean War. 0:17:06.880 --> 0:17:09.000 The result of a lack of state intervention meant that 0:17:09.080 --> 0:17:12.200 Nazi Germany lost the opportunity to build the first electronic 0:17:12.200 --> 0:17:14.800 computer in the late thirties, when the Wehrmacht refused to 0:17:14.800 --> 0:17:18.240 fund Conrad Zus, who had pioneered the use of binary code, 0:17:18.320 --> 0:17:22.160 stored programs, and electronic logic gates. One of the weirdest 0:17:22.160 --> 0:17:24.960 things about the Californian ideology is that the West Coast 0:17:25.000 --> 0:17:28.639 itself was a product of massive state intervention. Government dollars 0:17:28.720 --> 0:17:32.080 were used to build the irrigation systems, highways, schools, universities, 0:17:32.080 --> 0:17:35.200 and other infrastructural projects which make the good life possible. 0:17:35.600 --> 0:17:38.000 On top of these public subsidies, the West Coast high 0:17:38.040 --> 0:17:40.800 tech industrial complex has been feasting off the fattest pork 0:17:40.840 --> 0:17:43.800 barrel in history. For decades, the US government has poured 0:17:43.840 --> 0:17:46.720 billions of tax dollars into buying planes, missiles, electronics, and 0:17:46.800 --> 0:17:50.919 nuclear bombs from Californian companies. Americans have always had state planning, 0:17:51.000 --> 0:18:03.960 but they prefer to call it the defense budget. Now 0:18:04.240 --> 0:18:07.280 this state of affairs is more or less unchanged today. 0:18:07.680 --> 0:18:11.040 Elon Musk is probably the most celebrated modern tech visionary. 0:18:11.080 --> 0:18:14.480 Miss Sundry companies have taken nearly five billion dollars in 0:18:14.520 --> 0:18:19.160 public funding, subsidies, and government support since twenty fifteen. All 0:18:19.200 --> 0:18:22.959 of these libertarian visionaries who push in their political lives 0:18:23.240 --> 0:18:26.240 for a world of Los afaire economics and corporate sovereignty, 0:18:26.600 --> 0:18:30.600 only produce value with the help of tax payer dollars. Period. 0:18:31.080 --> 0:18:34.480 The irrational exuberance of public financing and the narcissism to 0:18:34.520 --> 0:18:37.440 ignore its role in innovation has given us a generation 0:18:37.520 --> 0:18:40.480 of tech industry overlords who seem bound and determined to 0:18:40.520 --> 0:18:45.040 destroy their own creations. Steve Jobs represented the most successful, 0:18:45.119 --> 0:18:49.120 and probably the most intelligent manifestation of the Californian ideology. 0:18:49.560 --> 0:18:52.760 Every tech industry ghoul currently boiling away fortunes for the 0:18:52.760 --> 0:18:55.480 sake of their ego. I'm thinking of Zuckerberg and Musk 0:18:55.560 --> 0:18:59.480 most prominently right now is trying to be him. Steve's 0:18:59.480 --> 0:19:02.320 skill was being able to perfectly inhabit the form of 0:19:02.359 --> 0:19:04.720 a visionary, and he was so good at doing this 0:19:04.840 --> 0:19:08.040 that he convinced this generation they could follow in his footsteps. 0:19:08.920 --> 0:19:12.080 But Steve Jobs was only ever playing at being a creator, 0:19:12.200 --> 0:19:15.600 at being an inventor. His skill was not in making things. 0:19:15.800 --> 0:19:18.639 He had other people to do the making. Steve was 0:19:18.680 --> 0:19:22.360 an exceptional confidence man, and like all good confidence men, 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:25.600 he was able to make money because he understood on 0:19:25.680 --> 0:19:29.879 a deep level what other human beings wanted. This skill 0:19:29.920 --> 0:19:32.760 allowed him to lock Apple into spending hundreds of millions 0:19:32.760 --> 0:19:34.600 of dollars on R and D for what would become 0:19:34.640 --> 0:19:37.520 the first proper smartphone, and for a while he was 0:19:37.600 --> 0:19:40.159 just having them toss that money into an apparent chasm 0:19:40.280 --> 0:19:43.480 repeatedly turning back iterations of the product that weren't quite 0:19:43.520 --> 0:19:45.679 right on the strength of his belief that when they 0:19:45.800 --> 0:19:48.639 got it right, it would be worth it. In the 0:19:48.720 --> 0:19:50.960 years sense, we've seen many wanna be Steve's try to 0:19:51.000 --> 0:19:53.840 follow in his footsteps, igniting tens of billions of dollars 0:19:53.880 --> 0:19:57.160 of venture capital for absolutely nothing. One of the best 0:19:57.160 --> 0:19:59.760 examples would be Uber. They lost eight point five billion 0:19:59.800 --> 0:20:03.159 dollars in twenty nineteen six point eight billion dollars in 0:20:03.160 --> 0:20:06.639 twenty twenty. Once upon a time, the understanding the jobs 0:20:06.640 --> 0:20:08.920 and vision of what Uber could be was that all 0:20:08.920 --> 0:20:12.480 of this ignited VC cash would be worthwhile because eventually 0:20:12.560 --> 0:20:16.280 the company would succeed in replacing human drivers with autonomous cars, 0:20:16.600 --> 0:20:21.640 cutting out the primary cost in the entire professional driving industry, 0:20:22.160 --> 0:20:25.399 and making the potential for a shitload of profit. But 0:20:25.480 --> 0:20:28.359 after investing more than a billion dollars in self driving cars, 0:20:28.520 --> 0:20:32.160 Uber sold their entire autonomous vehicle division off at a loss. 0:20:32.440 --> 0:20:35.439 All of that expense had resulted in self driving cars 0:20:35.640 --> 0:20:40.320 that averaged one half mile traveled per accident. Despite this, 0:20:40.560 --> 0:20:43.040 after a two point six billion dollar loss in August 0:20:43.040 --> 0:20:47.280 of twenty twenty two, Uber stocks swared now, the realities 0:20:47.280 --> 0:20:49.520 of what generates profit and loss in the tech industry 0:20:49.800 --> 0:20:53.360 have been completely divorced from productive reality or value created 0:20:53.440 --> 0:20:57.359 for quite some time. The delamination of real value in 0:20:57.400 --> 0:21:00.720 big tech happens subtly. It's not howard to see ey Apple, 0:21:00.760 --> 0:21:03.159 who created a device every human being wanted to have 0:21:03.200 --> 0:21:06.520 in their pocket, became worth a shitload more money, right, 0:21:06.680 --> 0:21:09.960 pretty obvious. The value case for Google's core business search 0:21:10.280 --> 0:21:13.119 is also pretty obvious. And as much as I hate Facebook, 0:21:13.200 --> 0:21:16.680