Techbrats Do Not Represent Technology

Techbrats Goldberg, Shih and Gopman Do Not Represent Technology

In 20 or 30 years, what will we look back on and say “That was the issue of our time?”
I ask hyper-intelligent people this question from time to time, and the answers are frequently similar: environment, equality, employment and wage disparity are common.
I believe employment and wage disparity are the critical issues of our time.
Nowhere can this be seen more clearly and glaringly than in San Francisco. Rents in the city have skyrocketed and social unrest between the haves and have-nots has reached a boiling point. (Most recently, we saw protesters throwing a rock through the window of one of Google’s luxurious private buses.)
It’s hard for people not to hate technologists when faced with the absolute loathsomeness of three now-infamous industry executives: Peter Shih, Greg Gopman and Bryan Goldberg.
In three separate blog posts over the past year, these spoiled techbrats have shown the absolute worst qualities of the elite: a lack of empathy and class, combined with horrible entitlement — and the absolute inability to write.
Peter Shih, a startup founder, wrote that San Francisco is a city with a “pathetic excuse for a public transportation system,” where ‘I pay 80% of my salary to live down the street from crackheads and meth addicts” and which is home to “some of the craziest homeless people I have ever seen in my life” (his solution: “just hand them a handle of vodka and a pack of cigarettes, it’ll save everyone some trouble.”)
Link: http://goo.gl/nT5yJC
His bile was followed by Gopman’s post which claimed:
“The difference [between SF and elsewhere] is in other cosmopolitan cities, the lower part of society keep to themselves. They sell small trinkets, beg coyly, stay quiet, and generally stay out of your way. They realize it’s a privilege to be in the civilized part of town and view themselves as guests. And that’s okay…
You can preach compassion, equality, and be the biggest lover in the world, but there is an area of town for degenerates and an area of town for the working class. There is nothing positive gained from having them so close to us. It’s a burden and a liability having them so close to us. Believe me, if they added the smallest iota of value I’d consider thinking different…”
Link: http://goo.gl/kEHAcj
Not to be outdone, millionaire Goldberg — the most successful of all these executives, having sold the widely-regarded-as-spam site Bleacher Report — did a ‘satirical piece’ that showed a complete lack of awareness, intelligence or ability to compose satire. Salon dubbed it “rock bottom” in “tech’s culture war.”
Link: http://goo.gl/j18NDq
[ Click here to tweet this editorial: http://ctt.ec/e2Juq ]
Where to begin.
First, all three of these executives should be thankful they were born in a time when the ability to write code and understand technology was so absurdly rewarded as compared to the other crucial work of the world. Important things like teaching children to be productive citizens, running into burning buildings, protecting citizens from crime, doing CPR on people in cardiac arrest, and going to war and risking having your legs blown off by an IED.
In another age, say one where the ability to use a sword was the most in demand skill, these specimens wouldn’t have had the resolve to make it out of adolescence alive.
Second, if you are lucky enough to be absurdly rewarded as compared to the rest of society, a solid default position is to shut up and enjoy your epic rewards — not to taunt and abuse those less fortunate than yourself.
Third, if you have been delightfully rewarded for building websites — websites!!! — as opposed to digging ditches 10 hours a day, six days a week, perhaps you should look at those less fortunate than yourself with compassion and — gasp! — do something to help them?
Fourth, if your ability to write tops out at the Christmas card level, perhaps it would be wise for you to hone your skills before tackling the most sensitive and pressing issues of our time?
As my Tae Kwon Do teacher told me in me in my developing years, when I was prone to speak first and think second, “an empty can makes the most noise.”
These noisy individuals do not represent the technology industry within which I’ve built my career. No, the technologists of true success and merit develop and execute strategies to make society more just, fair and joyful for all.
Bill Gates gave up three or four delightful decades of working on building one of the great technology empires of all time to do things like eradicate malaria, provide clean drinking water and reinvent the condom so people would use them more often.
Mark Cuban dedicates his time to investing in startups that will never return even a small fraction of his wealth, while silently helping wounded soldiers and the poor (the details of which are largely unreported).
Elon Musk risked his entire fortune — and pushed himself personally to the brink — to get us off carbon and he’s still driving himself at an inhuman pace to “back up Earth” on another planet. (I’ve encouraged him to pace himself many times, but it’s just not how he is wired.)
Jeff Skoll has produced media — at great loss and risk at times — in order to expand people’s consciousness about important issues. Fast Food Nation, An Inconvenient Truth, Food Inc, Darfur Now, and his new TV network, Pivot, which aims to package up serious issues for millennials.
The list of technologists doing great things for humanity is endless, but the media is obsessing over these pathetic, visionless grandstanders– and I don’t blame them. This level of stupidity and vileness is editorial manna from above. How could the media not focus in on it?
A society can best be judged by how the most privileged regard and treat the most vulnerable and weak.
I have a challenge for these three individuals: invest in HandUp, a wonderful startup trying to actually help the homeless and distraught individuals in San francisco (and eventually beyond, I’m sure). If you each invest $10,000 in Handup I will match each of you. (Note: I’m already an investor, having invested on the spot during my talk with Rose: http://youtu.be/h9PSGHg2Vl0).
more: http://angel.co/handup
[ Sidenote: It’s a B (as in ‘benefit)’ corporation similar to stuff like Tom’s Shoes or Ben & Jerry’s, which aims to build a sustainable business by making a platform to help organizations focused on the homeless and poor. It’s “kickstarter for the homeless” and I say that with pride, not as a joke. Note: any profit I make from this investment I will donate to the homeless. ]
It takes only a cursory amount of reading — start with the mayor’s offices multiyear study on the cities ~6,000 homeless — to understand that a large percentage of the homeless are suffering from depression, mental illness, substance abuse and/or the elimination of their jobs.
And keep in mind that the “disruption” that is so lauded in our industry is largely one that removes inefficiencies, frequently defined as a “humans” working in “jobs.”
I’d argue that society’s issues around job loss are largely attributable to the massive change brought on by the technology we are building, and the wealth we are creating for a small subset of society.
This fact is indisputable and I believe it puts the responsibility for the weakest in our society on us — the technologists and investors — who not by happenstance are benefiting from this change.
On a strictly pragmatic basis, if you’re rich and privileged in our violently changing society, ask yourself if the last couple of bitcoins or homes you own are worth having a brick thrown through the window of bus you’re riding on.
It is completely possible that in the next 10 years, the streets of San Francisco and Manhattan will be filled with riots and protests by disenfranchised individuals–oh wait, that was the last three years: http://youtu.be/8yXSC0U9M6c
What is the point of this ever expanding “long boom” if we leave so many behind?
What a shallow victory we will have wrought if so many suffer so greatly while we benefit so exorbitantly.
all the best,
Jason Calacanis
@jason
http://www.twitter.com/jason
PS – Sorry to have not written the followup piece to #googlewinseverything, but I felt that this piece needed to come now–before another ‘techbro’ decides the world needs to know how stupid and insensitive they are. Second, I’m on deadline for the Jan. 23rd launch ofwww.inside.com, as well as the LAUNCH Hackathon (Feb 21-23) & LAUNCH Festival on Feb. 24-26th (http://festival.launch.co).
PPS – If I get a moment I’ll follow up on this piece by expanding the final two points–or perhaps someone with the ability to write like @paulcarr, @lons, @jasonpontin, @karaswisher, @hblodget, etc. could take on these two concepts:
a) What responsibility does the Tech Industry specifically have to the people it has made redundant?
b) Wouldn’t it be a better world for everyone if we used just a small portion of the massive profits being made to ensure that everyone had a place to live and eat, so our cities weren’t overrun with poverty, hunger and desperation, making American cities like Los Angeles essentially Third World nations?
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Read this on the LAUNCH Blog: http://blog.launch.co/blog/techbrats-goldberg-shih-and-gopman-do-not-represent-technolo.html

The failure of sharing their work in the pre-911 world

Would NSA surveillance have stopped 9/11 plot?
Read the reports of the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security http://www.markle.org/national-security/markle-task-force-national-security for a rather good look at the failure of sharing their work in the pre-911 world

THE CLAPPER "LIE," AND THE SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE

SECRECY NEWS from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy Volume 2014, Issue No. 1 January
THE CLAPPER “LIE,” AND THE SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE
Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper has been widely
criticized for making a false statement at a March 2013 hearing of the
Senate Intelligence Committee. What has gone unremarked, however, is the
fact that the Committee permitted that statement to stand uncorrected.
Sen. Ron Wyden asked DNI James Clapper at a March 12, 2013 hearing “Does the
NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of
Americans?”
DNI Clapper replied “No, sir.” He added “Not wittingly. There are cases
where they could, inadvertently perhaps, collect — but not wittingly.”
Based on this exchange, and in light of the revelations to the contrary made
by Edward Snowden, some have concluded that DNI Clapper “lied to Congress,”
as the New York Times editorial board put it last week. Some go further to
suggest that the DNI should be prosecuted and imprisoned, as Sen. Rand Paul
did yesterday.
It is of course wrong for officials to make false statements, as DNI Clapper
did when he denied that NSA collects “any type of data at all” on ordinary
Americans. But did the DNI actually “lie to Congress”?
In ordinary usage, lying usually connotes an intent to deceive. In this
case, DNI Clapper could not have intended to deceive the Senate Intelligence
Committee because the true answer to Senator Wyden’s question was already
known to Senator Wyden and to all the other members of the Committee (as
noted the other day by ODNI General Counsel Robert S. Litt). Committee
members could not have been misled by the DNI’s response, and it makes no
sense to say that he intended to mislead them.
What remains true is that others — especially attentive members of the
public — were deceived by the DNI’s statement. If DNI Clapper “lied,” it
was to them, not to the Senate Intelligence Committee, that he did so. But
the Committee permitted that deception to occur, and to persist, and so it
must take its share of responsibility for that. Yet unlike the DNI (who
apologized, several months after the fact, saying he misunderstood the
question), the Committee has not acknowledged any failure on its part.
When Senator Wyden posed his question in open session, he was evidently
attempting to corner the DNI and to compel him to involuntarily reveal
classified information about the NSA bulk collection program. At the time,
it seemed to be a clever rhetorical maneuver. Even if the DNI refused to
respond or requested to answer the question in closed session, that would
have indicated that something pertinent was being concealed.
However, by answering falsely, the DNI turned the tables on Senator Wyden
and the Senate Intelligence Committee. Whether by design or not (almost
certainly not), the DNI’s response challenged the Committee to make its own
choice either to disclose classified information about the NSA program — in
order to rebut and correct the DNI’s answer — or else to acquiesce in the
dissemination of false information to the public.
(There was another conceivable option. Without revealing specific classified
information, the Committee could have issued a statement that the record of
the March 12 hearing included certain erroneous and misleading statements,
and that it should not be relied upon.)
As it turned out, the Senate Intelligence Committee made exactly the same
choice that DNI Clapper is accused of making. The Committee evidently
decided that national security classification trumped any obligation it had
to produce an honest and accurate public record. As a result, the Committee
itself became complicit in an act of public deception.
This is deeply unfortunate. It means that unclassified Committee statements
and publications cannot be granted an unqualified presumption of accuracy or
good faith. With the Clapper gambit, the Senate Intelligence Committee moved
beyond the familiar practice of secrecy and into the propagation of false
and misleading information.

Can American Democracy be Revived?

In what kind of “democracy” is wealth and income increasingly
concentrated in the hands of a minuscule fraction of the population?
In what kind of “free country” does the government imprison, or even
kill, people, including some of its own citizens, without due process?
Is large scale interception and collection of private communications
by a secret government agency compatible with a free society? Is “one
person, one vote” meaningful when elected officials are usually far
more responsive to sources of campaign funds than to voters? These
grim aspects of present day America are exacerbated by the fact that
no remedies are in sight. It appears that things will have to get even
worse before enough people realize that they need to change their
approach to politics.
My effort to explain the situation is accessible at:
http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~unger/articles/reviveDemocracy.html
Stephen H. Unger
Professor Emeritus
Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
Columbia University