WEBVTT - Silicon Valley is a Failure 0:00:04.880 --> 0:00:07.760 Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and welcome to It could 0:00:07.920 --> 0:00:11.520 happen here. You know, when we started the show, when 0:00:11.520 --> 0:00:13.000 I did the first season of it, you know, the 0:00:13.039 --> 0:00:16.639 one about all the Civil War stuff back in twenty nineteen, 0:00:17.320 --> 0:00:19.599 this was basically a place for me to write long 0:00:19.760 --> 0:00:23.400 essays explaining my vision of the future and the present. Uh, 0:00:23.440 --> 0:00:25.840 And people seem to like that a lot. We did 0:00:25.880 --> 0:00:27.880 a little bit of that at the start of this 0:00:27.960 --> 0:00:32.519 new Eternal daily season of the show. Um, but obviously 0:00:32.520 --> 0:00:34.800 over the last year or so, it's it's morphed into 0:00:34.840 --> 0:00:39.040 something very different and something wonderful and successful, and it's 0:00:39.320 --> 0:00:42.560 brought a lot of new voices, or at least voices 0:00:42.760 --> 0:00:45.960 people maybe hadn't heard from as much out in front 0:00:46.000 --> 0:00:47.960 of the audience, and I've been really happy about that. 0:00:48.360 --> 0:00:51.040 But what I also haven't been doing is writing any 0:00:51.040 --> 0:00:54.800 more essays about the world and how fucked up shit is, 0:00:55.680 --> 0:00:58.640 because you know, I've been managing a bunch of stuff 0:00:58.880 --> 0:01:01.520 and there's been a lot of work to do. But 0:01:01.800 --> 0:01:04.200 I like doing that stuff, and I think you people 0:01:04.280 --> 0:01:07.320 like it, So I'm gonna try to do more of that. 0:01:07.400 --> 0:01:09.640 And I wanted to kind of start by talking a 0:01:09.680 --> 0:01:12.600 little bit about Silicon Valley, and I'm going to say 0:01:12.680 --> 0:01:14.920 something at the start of this essay that a lot 0:01:14.920 --> 0:01:18.080 of people are probably instinctively going to want to disagree with, 0:01:18.080 --> 0:01:21.720 which is that Silicon Valley and the tech industry have 0:01:21.840 --> 0:01:25.160 been gigantic failures by every metric that matters. They have 0:01:25.280 --> 0:01:29.039 made life comprehensively worse for humanity, and there is no 0:01:29.240 --> 0:01:32.880 real fact based counter argument to that statement. This is 0:01:32.920 --> 0:01:34.720 a hard pill for people to swallow. I'm sure a 0:01:34.760 --> 0:01:36.920 lot of folks are frustrated in me for saying it 0:01:37.040 --> 0:01:40.400 right now, and they're thinking of counter arguments. Most people 0:01:40.400 --> 0:01:43.639 today are critical of the tech industry, obviously, particularly major 0:01:43.680 --> 0:01:46.760 social media companies, but they still tend to acknowledge the 0:01:46.800 --> 0:01:50.040 tremendous wealth created by Silicon Valley, as if there's some 0:01:50.080 --> 0:01:52.600 sort of inherent value to that Behind a number on 0:01:52.640 --> 0:01:57.400 a spreadsheet. Collectively, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Google, the 0:01:57.440 --> 0:02:00.160 so called Big five had a seven point I have 0:02:00.200 --> 0:02:04.160 trillion dollar market cap in every person listening to this 0:02:04.240 --> 0:02:06.720 keeps a device in their pocket made by or using 0:02:06.720 --> 0:02:09.560 the software of one or more of these companies, And 0:02:09.600 --> 0:02:11.960 so when people want to make the counter argument to 0:02:12.200 --> 0:02:14.560 what I just said, they'll tend to point out some 0:02:14.680 --> 0:02:17.320 version of this. Uh yeah, companies like Facebook have done 0:02:17.320 --> 0:02:19.440 bad things, but the Internet still a tool for good. 0:02:19.480 --> 0:02:22.760 It connects people, YadA, YadA, YadA. Smartphones empower us. You know. 0:02:22.840 --> 0:02:25.840 There's all these positive things about the internet, to which 0:02:25.919 --> 0:02:28.799 I will say, present me with your fucking evidence that 0:02:28.800 --> 0:02:32.400 that has mattered for people really in terms that actually 0:02:32.720 --> 0:02:36.600 inaggregate improve their lives. I will show you my arguments 0:02:36.600 --> 0:02:39.400 to the contrary. In the period of time from Harry 0:02:39.400 --> 0:02:42.640 Truman's election to the end of the Nixon administration, American 0:02:42.680 --> 0:02:45.680 productivity on a per capita basis increased at a faster 0:02:45.800 --> 0:02:48.360 rate than it did at any other point in history. 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:51.680 But then something happened. From nineteen seventy three to two 0:02:51.720 --> 0:02:55.280 thousand and thirteen, income growth was eight percent slower than 0:02:55.320 --> 0:02:58.440 it had been in the previous three decades. If productivity 0:02:58.520 --> 0:03:00.880 had continued to grow with the same rate from nineteen 0:03:00.919 --> 0:03:03.560 seventy three to two thousand thirteen as it did from 0:03:03.639 --> 0:03:06.800 nineteen forty six to nineteen seventy three, the economy in 0:03:06.800 --> 0:03:10.079 two thousand thirteen would have been sixty percent larger than 0:03:10.120 --> 0:03:13.560 it actually was. Now, I'm gonna guess a decent number 0:03:13.600 --> 0:03:16.519 of the people listening to this grew up watching the Jetsons. 0:03:16.560 --> 0:03:18.200 I know I didn't. For the most part, it was 0:03:18.200 --> 0:03:21.200 a silly, pretty harmless animated show, but at the center 0:03:21.280 --> 0:03:23.480 of it was a dream about the future that seems 0:03:23.560 --> 0:03:27.280 unfathomable in light of current events. George Jetson, who was 0:03:27.320 --> 0:03:30.280 in the show a pretty normal working class guy, worked 0:03:30.320 --> 0:03:32.400 three hours a day for three days a week. One 0:03:32.400 --> 0:03:34.120 of the running jokes in the show is that he 0:03:34.200 --> 0:03:39.240 considered himself overworked despite this pretty idyllic schedule. Now, this 0:03:39.320 --> 0:03:42.200 was never particularly a focus of the show. It was 0:03:42.240 --> 0:03:44.600 just kind of something that was mentioned from time to time. 0:03:44.920 --> 0:03:47.040 And that's because the idea that a work week might 0:03:47.080 --> 0:03:50.000 just be nine hours in the future wasn't a joke. 0:03:50.400 --> 0:03:53.520 This was the direction of futurists in the nineteen sixties, 0:03:53.840 --> 0:03:56.880 looking at that surgeon productivity I just mentioned, and all 0:03:56.920 --> 0:03:58.920 of the middle class wealth that had been created from 0:03:58.920 --> 0:04:01.360 the forties through the early exties. This is the direction 0:04:01.400 --> 0:04:04.120 they saw us heading in around a decade ago, in 0:04:04.160 --> 0:04:07.120 a period that was still significantly more optimistic than our 0:04:07.120 --> 0:04:10.640 current age. The Atlantics Alexis Madrigal, when on a reading 0:04:10.640 --> 0:04:14.480 spree of some early twentieth century futurist novels. His conclusion 0:04:14.560 --> 0:04:19.120 was this quote. Technological optimists sold the world on automation 0:04:19.160 --> 0:04:22.120 by telling people it would create unimaginable amounts of leisure 0:04:22.160 --> 0:04:24.240 for them. The big question for the workers of the 0:04:24.240 --> 0:04:26.760 twenty first century would be how to spend their copious 0:04:26.800 --> 0:04:31.120 amounts of free time. Now, the future we've actually gotten 0:04:31.160 --> 0:04:33.599 has given us the opposite of this dream to try 0:04:33.600 --> 0:04:36.200 and cover up the rank and rampant ways modern technology 0:04:36.240 --> 0:04:39.479 has failed humanity. Think tanks funded by venture capitalists and 0:04:39.520 --> 0:04:43.520 tech gurus produce an endless stream of identical futurist thinker 0:04:43.560 --> 0:04:46.480 types who write columns about how the world is actually 0:04:46.520 --> 0:04:49.560 better today than it's ever been. A good example of 0:04:49.560 --> 0:04:53.440 this would be this June column by Rob Askar titled 0:04:53.640 --> 0:04:57.000 the World's getting better, Here's why your brain can't believe it. 0:04:57.000 --> 0:05:00.200 It opens with this paragraph, Life has improved for most 0:05:00.240 --> 0:05:03.839 people around the world over the past generation, temporary pandemics aside. 0:05:04.160 --> 0:05:06.039 The rub is that you can't get anyone to believe 0:05:06.080 --> 0:05:08.480 the good news, and the result is a toxic political 0:05:08.560 --> 0:05:11.560 environment and the potential collapse of democratic norms if too 0:05:11.560 --> 0:05:14.200 few people feel that a stressed system is worth saving. 0:05:15.040 --> 0:05:17.679 Now I might point out, for example, that if people 0:05:17.720 --> 0:05:21.440 don't actually feel like the system is good, perhaps it's 0:05:21.440 --> 0:05:24.520 not really working well. There's a number of counter arguments 0:05:24.560 --> 0:05:27.400 you can make to this. Now, two years later, this 0:05:27.440 --> 0:05:30.520 again was written in June, we've got a massive war 0:05:30.560 --> 0:05:33.480 in Europe. People are worried about nuclear warfare as a 0:05:33.520 --> 0:05:36.520 result of that. Again, we've got a degradation of democracy 0:05:36.600 --> 0:05:38.720 worldwide that's continued to pace from where it was in 0:05:39.720 --> 0:05:42.680 We've got soaring inequality, we've got inflation the likes of 0:05:42.720 --> 0:05:45.200 which a lot of people alive have never seen, myself 0:05:45.240 --> 0:05:49.159 included prior to this point. And we still have a pandemic. 0:05:49.600 --> 0:05:52.280 So it's clear that Rob is at least not as 0:05:52.279 --> 0:05:54.200 smart as he thinks he is, which is what I 0:05:54.200 --> 0:05:56.640 would say about everyone who makes versions of the same 0:05:56.680 --> 0:05:59.240 claim that he was making. Now, this doesn't mean I'm 0:05:59.240 --> 0:06:01.400 saying that life is worse now than it was at 0:06:01.400 --> 0:06:03.720 some imagined pre lapse arian version of the past. I 0:06:03.720 --> 0:06:05.560 actually think that's kind of a useless way to think 0:06:05.560 --> 0:06:08.000 about the past. In the future, there's different things people 0:06:08.000 --> 0:06:10.920 would have preferred. There's things that are objectively better, there's 0:06:10.960 --> 0:06:14.200 things that are objectively indebatably worse. You know, that's hard 0:06:14.240 --> 0:06:17.040 to make those kind of claims about history, especially when 0:06:17.040 --> 0:06:19.960 they often rely on saying, well, X amount of more 0:06:19.960 --> 0:06:22.440 people have been pulled out of poverty, and the question 0:06:22.440 --> 0:06:25.720 to that as well, I don't know, before colonization of Africa, 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:28.479 would you say all of those people in what became 0:06:28.520 --> 0:06:32.240 the colonized parts of Africa were in poverty or were 0:06:32.240 --> 0:06:35.159 they simply not part of a system that measures poverty 0:06:35.560 --> 0:06:38.640 and anyway, whatever. We can go on and on about that. 0:06:38.960 --> 0:06:41.440 My point is that the metrics these people used to 0:06:41.520 --> 0:06:44.279 claim the success of our current system to talk about 0:06:44.320 --> 0:06:47.479 how wonderful things are today are constantly shifting, and they're 0:06:47.520 --> 0:06:51.239 widely arbitrary. The same year Rob wrote his stupid column, 0:06:51.279 --> 0:06:53.880 an in O r C studies showed that Americans self 0:06:53.920 --> 0:06:57.040 reported being happy at the lowest levels in fifty years. 0:06:57.600 --> 0:07:00.159 You can quote jupe statistics about wealth or acts as 0:07:00.279 --> 0:07:02.880 to luxury goods all you want, but the modern world 0:07:02.920 --> 0:07:05.600 and the post two thousand eight financial crash economy, all 0:07:05.640 --> 0:07:08.359 of which was built in the shade of the tech industry, 0:07:08.400 --> 0:07:12.440 is making people miserable now. Happiness is obviously not a 0:07:12.440 --> 0:07:15.880 perfect measure of progress either. Self reporting is always dicey, 0:07:16.320 --> 0:07:19.280 but things like the consumer price index in per capita income, 0:07:19.280 --> 0:07:21.560 which are often used by folks on the optimist side, 0:07:21.680 --> 0:07:23.960 are also juked and jiggered to hell and back. So 0:07:24.640 --> 0:07:26.880 to provide a bit more of an international scale, I'm 0:07:26.920 --> 0:07:30.800 going to quote from the Berkeley University's Greater Good magazine quote. 0:07:31.320 --> 0:07:34.080 Released annually on the International Day of Happiness, the World 0:07:34.080 --> 0:07:37.000 Happiness Report ranks countries based on their life satisfaction and 0:07:37.040 --> 0:07:40.120 the Gallop World Poll. Residents rate how satisfied they are 0:07:40.120 --> 0:07:41.880 with their lives in the scale of zero to ten, 0:07:42.120 --> 0:07:44.480 from the worst possible life to the best possible life. 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:47.800 This year's report also analyzes how global happiness has changed 0:07:47.840 --> 0:07:50.440 over time, based on data stretching back to two thousand five. 0:07:50.840 --> 0:07:54.600 One trend is very clear. Negative feelings, worries, sadness, and 0:07:54.640 --> 0:07:57.880 anger have been rising around the world, up by from 0:07:57.920 --> 0:08:01.400 two thousand ten to two thousand eighteen. The others also 0:08:01.400 --> 0:08:03.920 found troubling trends, and happiness in equality, which is the 0:08:03.920 --> 0:08:08.080 psychological parallel to income inequality, how much individuals in society 0:08:08.160 --> 0:08:10.840 differ and how satisfied they are with life. Since two 0:08:10.880 --> 0:08:14.520 thousand seven, happiness inequality has been rising within countries, meaning 0:08:14.520 --> 0:08:16.760 that the gap between the unhappy and the happy has 0:08:16.760 --> 0:08:20.240 been getting wider. This trend is particularly strong in Latin America, 0:08:20.360 --> 0:08:25.160 Asia and Sub Saharan Africa. And this is kind of 0:08:25.200 --> 0:08:27.760 getting it. I think, what is an incredibly important point, 0:08:27.760 --> 0:08:29.960 for one thing, if you want to look at how 0:08:30.080 --> 0:08:34.440 people have self reported their unhappiness rising. This massive recent 0:08:34.520 --> 0:08:37.280 surge and unhappiness occurs almost at exactly the period of 0:08:37.280 --> 0:08:40.520 time that the smartphone takes off and becomes ubiquitous. And 0:08:40.559 --> 0:08:43.240 the smartphone is such a bafflingly useful device. I would 0:08:43.320 --> 0:08:45.319 never want to give mine up as a thing that 0:08:45.440 --> 0:08:48.920 I had access to. And the Internet is incredibly powerful tool. 0:08:48.920 --> 0:08:51.600 I wouldn't want to give the Internet up either. But 0:08:51.760 --> 0:08:56.400 the usefulness and the the undoubtable brilliance behind these products 0:08:56.720 --> 0:08:59.839 makes it seem inconceivable to argue that they haven't made 0:08:59.880 --> 0:09:02.559 us better at accomplishing the things that matter to us. 0:09:02.600 --> 0:09:05.480 But the evidence on this is pretty clear. I want 0:09:05.480 --> 0:09:07.240 to quote now from a write up in The Atlantic. 0:09:08.559 --> 0:09:11.000 No matter how aggressively you torture the numbers, the computer 0:09:11.080 --> 0:09:13.560 age has coincided with a decline in the rate of 0:09:13.600 --> 0:09:17.400 economic growth. When Chad Civerson, an economist, at the University 0:09:17.440 --> 0:09:20.520 of Chicago's Business School looked at the question of missing growth. 0:09:20.600 --> 0:09:23.600 He found that the productivity slowdown has reduced GDP by 0:09:23.640 --> 0:09:27.640 two points seven trillion dollars since two thousand four. Americans 0:09:27.640 --> 0:09:30.120 may love their smartphones, but all those free apps aren't 0:09:30.120 --> 0:09:33.360 worth trillions of dollars. The physical world of the city, 0:09:33.480 --> 0:09:36.359 the glow of electric powered lights, the rumble of automobiles, 0:09:36.400 --> 0:09:38.960 the roar of airplanes overhead and subways below is a 0:09:39.000 --> 0:09:42.280 product of late nineteenth century In early twentieth century invention, 0:09:42.679 --> 0:09:46.680 the physical environment feels depressingly finished. The bulk of innovation 0:09:46.720 --> 0:09:49.600 has been shunted into the invisible realm of bites and code. 0:09:50.200 --> 0:09:53.280 All of that code, technology advocates argue has increased human 0:09:53.400 --> 0:09:56.200 ingenuity by allowing individuals to tinker, talk, and trade with 0:09:56.280 --> 0:10:00.400 unprecedented ease. This certainly feels true. Who could spute the 0:10:00.440 --> 0:10:02.760 fact that it's easier than ever to record music, market 0:10:02.760 --> 0:10:05.600 a video game, or published an essay. But by most measures, 0:10:05.640 --> 0:10:09.760 individual innovation is in decline. In two thousand fifteen, Americans 0:10:09.760 --> 0:10:11.760 were far less likely to start a company than they 0:10:11.760 --> 0:10:15.120 were in the nineteen eighties. According to the economist Tyler Cohen, 0:10:15.360 --> 0:10:18.240 the spread of broadband technology has corresponded with a drop 0:10:18.280 --> 0:10:21.280 off an entrepreneurial activity in almost every city and in 0:10:21.360 --> 0:10:33.680 almost every industry. Now you might think from all this 0:10:33.760 --> 0:10:36.160 that I'm left ahead into some sort of techno dum 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:39.880 er anti primitives rant here. I'm not. Perhaps I should, 0:10:39.880 --> 0:10:42.600 but I'm not. I am a person who loves technology. 0:10:42.720 --> 0:10:45.400 I got my start as a journalist as a tech journalist. 0:10:45.480 --> 0:10:49.120 I've joyously traveled the world for years visiting conventions looking 0:10:49.160 --> 0:10:50.680 at new gadgets, and a lot of this was in 0:10:50.720 --> 0:10:54.120 that pretty wondrous period if you're a gadget nerd from 0:10:54.160 --> 0:10:56.439 two thousand eight to two thousand eleven, where there were 0:10:56.440 --> 0:11:00.240 just these amazing, new, weird sci fi gadgets dropping every 0:11:00.240 --> 0:11:02.760 single week, stuff that you'd grown up watching, and like 0:11:02.840 --> 0:11:05.520 Star Trek, the next generation suddenly getting mailed to your 0:11:05.559 --> 0:11:08.280 door for you to test out. I tested hundreds of 0:11:08.280 --> 0:11:10.800 tablets and smart gadgets in that time frame, and there's 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:13.480 some really great products that came out from that period. 0:11:13.520 --> 0:11:16.240 Bluetooth speakers are wonderful. A lot of people, including me, 0:11:16.360 --> 0:11:18.960 use them happily on a daily basis, But when it 0:11:19.000 --> 0:11:22.959 comes to legitimately life changing applications of technology that's come 0:11:23.000 --> 0:11:25.760 to us in the last fifteen years or so. I 0:11:25.800 --> 0:11:28.600 can really only think of three things. Number one is 0:11:28.600 --> 0:11:32.400 the ability to navigate by GPS basically everywhere. Number two 0:11:32.480 --> 0:11:34.840 is the ability to be in constant contact with people 0:11:34.880 --> 0:11:37.360 around the world. And number three is the ability to 0:11:37.440 --> 0:11:40.760 store a shipload of media on a portable device. So 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:43.600 I'm not anti technology. Nor am I saying that big 0:11:43.600 --> 0:11:46.000 tech doesn't make things that are cool or useful. Nor 0:11:46.000 --> 0:11:48.240 am I saying we should get rid of this stuff. 0:11:48.520 --> 0:11:51.520 The point I'm making is that viewed at thirty thou feet, 0:11:51.880 --> 0:11:55.680 the tech industry has produced very little of quantifiable value 0:11:55.720 --> 0:11:58.880 to the human race, and it has caused unfathomable harm 0:11:58.920 --> 0:12:02.400 at the same time. Now, in my opinion, this has nothing, 0:12:02.520 --> 0:12:04.480 or at least fairly little to do with how the 0:12:04.600 --> 0:12:08.520 technology inherently works, and instead has everything to do with 0:12:08.559 --> 0:12:12.199 the ideology behind the people who developed and who continue 0:12:12.280 --> 0:12:15.960 to marshal that technology. In nineteen ninety five, two of 0:12:16.000 --> 0:12:18.720 the smartest guys in the twentieth century by my estimation, 0:12:19.040 --> 0:12:22.240 Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, wrote an essay about the 0:12:22.280 --> 0:12:25.040 ideology that animated the men who had come to dominate 0:12:25.080 --> 0:12:28.520 the twenty first century tech industry. They titled their essay 0:12:28.760 --> 0:12:31.960 the Californian Ideology, and I think it still counts as 0:12:31.960 --> 0:12:34.760 one of the three or four most incisive accurate essays 0:12:34.760 --> 0:12:37.400 of that century. The gist of the idea was that 0:12:37.760 --> 0:12:39.920 as the first wave of the digital boom started to 0:12:40.000 --> 0:12:42.720 hit in the mid nineteen nineties, the thinkers behind it 0:12:42.720 --> 0:12:45.880 were fueled by a mix of left wing by a 0:12:45.920 --> 0:12:50.319 mix of left wing egalitarian, often anti status beliefs that 0:12:50.400 --> 0:12:54.880 got wedded to right wing free market fundamentalist libertarian ideology 0:12:54.960 --> 0:12:58.199 and created this deeply toxic way of thinking about the future. 0:12:58.840 --> 0:13:00.840 You can see this in the story of guys like 0:13:00.880 --> 0:13:04.120 Steve Wozniak, the inventor of the personal computer, who was 0:13:04.160 --> 0:13:07.160 also a former phone freaker. He committed federal crimes as 0:13:07.160 --> 0:13:10.360 a kid, hacking the phone system primarily because fuck the man. 0:13:10.960 --> 0:13:13.520 But then when he's a young man, the waws hooks 0:13:13.600 --> 0:13:15.760 up with a guy named Steve Jobs, and Jobs is 0:13:15.800 --> 0:13:18.680 a brilliant but heartless con man who cares about nothing 0:13:18.720 --> 0:13:23.439 but market dominance. Jobs recognizes the naive brilliance of Steve Wozniak, 0:13:23.520 --> 0:13:25.680 and he turns it into an engine for wealth creation. 0:13:25.760 --> 0:13:28.800 At one point, he steals money that Wosniak was owed 0:13:28.840 --> 0:13:31.559 for a project that they took on together, money Wosniac 0:13:31.679 --> 0:13:33.680 probably would have just given him if he'd asked, and 0:13:33.720 --> 0:13:36.720 he used it secretly to fund their business, which became Apple. 0:13:37.559 --> 0:13:39.840 In their essay, Cameron and Barbara, who are much better 0:13:39.840 --> 0:13:43.520 writers than I, described the Californian ideology this way. The 0:13:43.559 --> 0:13:47.160 Californian ideology is a mix of cybernetics, free market economics, 0:13:47.160 --> 0:13:51.200 and counterculture libertarianism, and is promuligated by magazines such as 0:13:51.280 --> 0:13:53.720 Wired and Mondo two thousand and preached in the books 0:13:53.720 --> 0:13:56.600 of Stuart Brand, Kevin Kelly, and others. The New Faith 0:13:56.640 --> 0:13:59.680 has been embraced by computer nerds, slacker students, thirty something 0:13:59.760 --> 0:14:03.240 cap the lists, hip academics, futurist bureaucrats, and even by 0:14:03.280 --> 0:14:08.240 the President of the USA himself. Now, the tech industry 0:14:08.280 --> 0:14:11.319 as we know it got its start courtesy of government money. 0:14:11.400 --> 0:14:13.640 Everyone knows that the first version of the Internet was 0:14:13.679 --> 0:14:16.800 developed as part of a Defense Department project, but the 0:14:16.960 --> 0:14:19.480 entire computer industry, all of the coders and engineers who 0:14:19.520 --> 0:14:22.800 would form the first generation of selincom Valley profit engines. 0:14:23.120 --> 0:14:25.960 All these guys got their start working for or as 0:14:25.960 --> 0:14:29.200 defense contractors. When the US pulled out of Vietnam, thousands 0:14:29.200 --> 0:14:30.800 of these people were left out of jobs and they 0:14:30.800 --> 0:14:34.040 were forced to move into the private sector. Everything worthwhile 0:14:34.120 --> 0:14:36.280 that's come out of big tech has involved a titanic 0:14:36.320 --> 0:14:38.520 amount of public funding, one way or the other. And 0:14:38.520 --> 0:14:41.800 I'm gonna quote from that essay again. Almost every major 0:14:41.840 --> 0:14:44.480 technological advance of the last two hundred years has taken 0:14:44.520 --> 0:14:46.800 place with the aid of large amounts of public money 0:14:46.840 --> 0:14:49.800 and under a good deal of government influence. The technologies 0:14:49.840 --> 0:14:51.520 of the computer in the net were invented with the 0:14:51.520 --> 0:14:54.840 aid of massive state subsidies. For example, the first difference 0:14:54.880 --> 0:14:58.240 Engine project received a British government grant of five hundred 0:14:58.240 --> 0:15:00.920 and seventeen thousand, four hundred and seven d pounds a 0:15:00.960 --> 0:15:04.400 small fortune in eighteen thirty four. From Colossus to ed VAC, 0:15:04.600 --> 0:15:08.200 from flight simulators to virtual reality, the development of computing 0:15:08.240 --> 0:15:11.240 has depended at key moments on public research handouts or 0:15:11.280 --> 0:15:15.080 fat contracts with public agencies. The IBM Corporation built the 0:15:15.120 --> 0:15:18.360 first programmable digital computer only after it was requested to 0:15:18.360 --> 0:15:20.640 do so by the U. S Defense Department during the 0:15:20.680 --> 0:15:23.640 Korean War. The result of a lack of state intervention 0:15:23.720 --> 0:15:26.440 meant that Nazi Germany lost the opportunity to build the 0:15:26.440 --> 0:15:29.280 first electronic computer in the late thirties when the Wehrmacht 0:15:29.280 --> 0:15:32.280 refused to fund Conrad Zooz, who had pioneered the use 0:15:32.280 --> 0:15:36.480 of binary code, stored programs, and electronic logic gates. One 0:15:36.480 --> 0:15:39.240 of the weirdest things about the Californian ideology is that 0:15:39.280 --> 0:15:42.479 the West Coast itself was a product of massive state intervention. 0:15:42.920 --> 0:15:47.040 Government dollars were used to build the irrigation systems, highway schools, universities, 0:15:47.080 --> 0:15:50.160 and other infrastructural projects which make the good life possible. 0:15:50.560 --> 0:15:53.040 On top of these public subsidies, the West Coast high 0:15:53.040 --> 0:15:55.800 tech industrial complex has been feasting off the fattest pork 0:15:55.840 --> 0:15:58.800 barrel in history. For decades, the US government has poured 0:15:58.840 --> 0:16:01.600 billions of tax dollars in to buying planes, missiles, electronics, 0:16:01.640 --> 0:16:05.240 and nuclear bombs from Californian companies. Americans have always had 0:16:05.280 --> 0:16:08.000 state planning, but they prefer to call it the defense budget. 0:16:18.640 --> 0:16:22.200 Now this state of affairs is more or less unchanged today. 0:16:22.680 --> 0:16:25.960 Elon Musk is probably the most celebrated modern tech visionary. 0:16:26.040 --> 0:16:29.480 Miss Sundry companies have taken nearly five billion dollars in 0:16:29.520 --> 0:16:33.280 public funding, subsidies, and government support since two thousand fifteen. 0:16:33.920 --> 0:16:37.560 All of these libertarian visionaries who push in their political 0:16:37.640 --> 0:16:41.200 lives for a world of lossyfair economics and corporate sovereignty, 0:16:41.560 --> 0:16:45.600 only produce value with the help of taxpayer dollars. Period. 0:16:46.040 --> 0:16:49.440 The irrational exuberance of public financing and the narcissism to 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:52.440 ignore its role in innovation has given us a generation 0:16:52.480 --> 0:16:55.440 of tech industry overlords who seem bound and determined to 0:16:55.480 --> 0:16:59.960 destroy their own creations. Steve Jobs represented the most successful 0:17:00.120 --> 0:17:04.480 and probably the most intelligent manifestation of the Californian ideology. 0:17:04.520 --> 0:17:07.720 Every tech industry ghoul currently boiling away fortunes for the 0:17:07.760 --> 0:17:10.520 sake of their ego. I'm thinking of Zuckerberg and Musk 0:17:10.560 --> 0:17:14.440 most prominently right now, is trying to be him. Steve's 0:17:14.480 --> 0:17:17.320 skill was being able to perfectly inhabit the form of 0:17:17.320 --> 0:17:19.679 a visionary, and he was so good at doing this 0:17:19.840 --> 0:17:23.040 that he convinced this generation they could follow in his footsteps. 0:17:23.920 --> 0:17:27.040 But Steve Jobs was only ever playing at being a creator, 0:17:27.160 --> 0:17:30.560 at being an inventor. His skill was not in making things. 0:17:30.760 --> 0:17:33.600 He had other people to do the making Steve was 0:17:33.640 --> 0:17:37.320 an exceptional confidence man, and like all good confidence men, 0:17:37.680 --> 0:17:40.560 he was able to make money because he understood on 0:17:40.640 --> 0:17:44.840 a deep level what other human beings wanted. This skill 0:17:44.880 --> 0:17:47.719 allowed him to lock Apple into spending hundreds of millions 0:17:47.720 --> 0:17:49.600 of dollars on R and D for what would become 0:17:49.600 --> 0:17:52.480 the first proper smartphone, and for a while he was 0:17:52.520 --> 0:17:55.200 just having them toss that money into an apparent chasm, 0:17:55.280 --> 0:17:58.680 repeatedly turning back iterations of the product that weren't quite right, 0:17:59.040 --> 0:18:01.000 on the strength of his leaf that when they got 0:18:01.000 --> 0:18:04.200 it right, it would be worth it. In the year since, 0:18:04.240 --> 0:18:06.399 we've seen many wanna be Steves try to follow in 0:18:06.480 --> 0:18:09.320 his footsteps, igniting tens of billions of dollars of venture 0:18:09.359 --> 0:18:12.760 capital for absolutely nothing. One of the best examples would 0:18:12.800 --> 0:18:15.240 be Uber. They lost eight point five billion dollars in 0:18:15.240 --> 0:18:19.880 two thousand nineteen, six point eight billion dollars. Once upon 0:18:19.920 --> 0:18:22.359 a time, the understanding, the jobs and vision of what 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:25.040 Uber could be was that all of this ignited VC 0:18:25.280 --> 0:18:28.680 cash would be worthwhile because eventually the company would succeed 0:18:28.720 --> 0:18:32.199 in replacing human drivers with autonomous cars, cutting out the 0:18:32.240 --> 0:18:38.000 primary cost in the entire professional driving industry, and making 0:18:38.280 --> 0:18:41.160 the potential for a shipload of profit, but after investing 0:18:41.200 --> 0:18:43.760 more than a billion dollars in self driving cars, Uber 0:18:43.920 --> 0:18:47.000 sold their entire autonomous vehicle division off at a loss. 0:18:47.400 --> 0:18:50.600 All of that expense had resulted in self driving cars 0:18:50.640 --> 0:18:55.280 that averaged one half mile travel per accident. Despite this, 0:18:55.560 --> 0:18:57.959 after a two point six billion dollar loss in August 0:18:58.000 --> 0:19:02.439 of two Uber stocks sword Now the realities of what 0:19:02.520 --> 0:19:05.120 generates profit and loss in the tech industry have been 0:19:05.119 --> 0:19:08.879 completely divorced from productive reality or value created for quite 0:19:08.920 --> 0:19:12.920 some time. The delamination of real value in big tech 0:19:13.080 --> 0:19:15.920 happens subtly. It's not hard to see why Apple, who 0:19:15.920 --> 0:19:18.240 created a device every human being wanted to have in 0:19:18.280 --> 0:19:22.440 their pocket, became worth a shipload more money, right pretty obvious. 0:19:22.760 --> 0:19:25.600 The value case for Google's core business, search is also 0:19:25.680 --> 0:19:28.280 pretty obvious. And as much as I hate Facebook, it 0:19:28.320 --> 0:19:31.800 became initially successful because it provided people with something of 0:19:31.840 --> 0:19:34.679 real value, a way to stay in touch with human 0:19:34.680 --> 0:19:36.960 beings they had met over the course of their lives. 0:19:37.720 --> 0:19:40.120 Younger folks may find this odd because they've grown up 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:42.080 with the Internet, but as a kid, I can remember 0:19:42.200 --> 0:19:45.080 very vividly my parents talking about the friends they'd had 0:19:45.080 --> 0:19:47.560 in high school and in college and how a lifetime 0:19:47.600 --> 0:19:50.360 of moving regularly had severed many of the connections they'd 0:19:50.440 --> 0:19:53.439 valued with these people. When I joined Facebook and my 0:19:53.480 --> 0:19:56.480 freshman year of college, I found real value and the 0:19:56.480 --> 0:20:00.159 ability to maintain and sometimes even build stronger connection with 0:20:00.160 --> 0:20:03.280 people I would otherwise have lost touch with entirely. There 0:20:03.400 --> 0:20:05.720 is the core of something good, or something at least 0:20:05.880 --> 0:20:10.199 valued inherently by people in Facebook, and that's true with most, 0:20:10.240 --> 0:20:13.320 if not all, of the Big five companies. When people 0:20:13.359 --> 0:20:16.200 reflexively leap to defend the tech industry as an engine 0:20:16.200 --> 0:20:19.280 of innovation, they can point to these successes. But the 0:20:19.320 --> 0:20:21.800 point that I'm making isn't that no good ideas come 0:20:21.800 --> 0:20:25.040 out of Silicon Valley, or that there isn't anything valuable 0:20:25.119 --> 0:20:27.960 that is involved in what these companies do. It's that 0:20:28.040 --> 0:20:30.800 the endless quest for profit and the narcissism of this 0:20:30.920 --> 0:20:35.520 Californian ideology lead inevitably to the destruction of whatever value 0:20:35.520 --> 0:20:38.880 the industry creates. This is why none of these innovations 0:20:38.880 --> 0:20:41.960 have actually led to surges and productivity, why none of 0:20:41.960 --> 0:20:44.120 them have made us any happier, which I think might 0:20:44.119 --> 0:20:48.280 be more important. Any potential these creations had was smothered 0:20:48.320 --> 0:20:52.560 by the ideology that drives Silicon Valley money. Facebook took 0:20:52.560 --> 0:20:55.440 the connections that they'd made with people and used them 0:20:55.480 --> 0:20:58.760 to feed those same people rage bait. They destroyed the 0:20:58.800 --> 0:21:02.919 open Internet, shut countless local news sites, put tons of 0:21:02.960 --> 0:21:07.280 people out of business, while algorithmically pushing millions of folks 0:21:07.280 --> 0:21:11.320 around the world towards whatever kept them angriest and most online. 0:21:11.800 --> 0:21:15.119 Google spent billions on an endless stream of spinoff products 0:21:15.160 --> 0:21:18.040