Cohen - The know-it-alls: the rise of Silicon Valley as a political powerhouse and social wrecking ball

2017 by Noam Cohen

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Published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2017

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ISBN 978-1-62097-211-3 (e-book)

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This book was set in Minion and Replica Bold

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Why, anybody can have a brain. Thats a very mediocre commodity. Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the Earth or slinks through slimy seas has a brain.

The Wizard of Oz

The end of man is knowledge, but there is one thing he cant know. He cant know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he cant know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasnt got and which if he had it, would save him.

All the Kings Men

CONTENTS

Table of Contents

I n a memorable Twilight Zone episode, To Serve Man, aliens land on Earth. These aliens, the Kanamits, nine feet tall and topped with massive heads, say theyve come in peace and intend to share their superior technology to benefit humanity. Immediately, they are true to their word. Barren soil in Argentina produces grain; mysterious force fields protect each nations borders, rendering the nuclear arms race irrelevant. And when the suspicious Soviets raise concerns, the Kanamits chief gladly takes and passes a lie detector test. A little while later, when the aliens suggest that Earthlings load up in a flying saucer to see the wonders on the Kanamits home planet, few question it. There are lines to get a precious seat.

The story is told in flashback through the eyes of one of those passengers, Michael Chambers, an American code breaker assigned to decipher a manuscript accidentally left behind by the Kanamit leader. A member of Chamberss decryption team succeeds in piecing together the manuscripts reassuring title, To Serve Man, and the world is confirmed in its belief that the aliens intentions are good. Chambers rushes onto the Kanamit bandwagon as one of the last passengers aboard. Yet just as Chambers walks up the ramp of the aliens ship, a voice below reveals the bitter truth about To Serve Man: Its a cookbook! At the end, a Kanamit is heard over a loudspeaker encouraging Chambers to be sure to eat all of his supper.

This story is flamboyantly absurd science fiction: How can you crack a code without a key to work off of? And would the Kanamit language really have the exact same double meaning for the phrase to serve? Furthermore, why would aliens come all this way to harvest people instead of something truly tasty like cattle or tuna or truffles? To Serve Man nonetheless manages to convey an important message: it is wise to be suspicious of those who claim to pursue selflessly the prosperity of others even as they pursue their own. Also, those dual meanings of serve may reveal a universal truth, in that purporting to act in service of others without their consent necessarily involves manipulation, grooming, and exploitation.

Silicon Valley surely is unrivaled in the American economy in its claims to serve mankind. So much so, in fact, that the satirical TV show Silicon Valley has a running joke that whenever a start-up founder is introduced, no matter how absurdly technical his project may be, he assures the audience that he is committed to making the world a better place. Paxos algorithms for consensus protocols... making the world a better place. Even when Google is being paid by businesses to show you ads, its really thinking about making your life better!

Facebook similarly insists that it acts in the best interest of humanity, no matter how its actions may be perceived. For example, there is the Free Basics project, which provides a Facebook-centric version of the Internet for cell phone users who cannot afford access to the actual Internet.

Certainly, from time immemorial, moguls have believed that their own prosperity must be good for all of society, but only the recent batch of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have acted as if money were an unanticipated byproduct of a life devoted to bettering mankind. Marc Andreessen, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist who serves on Facebooks board, was scathing when he learned that the Indian government had sided with the critics and blocked Free Basics. The governments decision was morally wrong and punishing to the worlds poorest people, Andreessen wrote on Twitter, offering yet another example of how India has been on the wrong track since its people kicked out their British overlords. Anti-colonialism has been economically catastrophic for the Indian people for decades. Why stop now? he asked sarcastically. Andreessen quickly apologized when he saw the furious response to those comments, particularly within India, but they nonetheless proved that he belonged among a tiny class of public figures who would have the self-assurance to make such a statement in the first place, to trash Indian democracy and self-determination in defense of their own belief systems and their own particular business models.

The Know-It-Alls is the story of these powerful, uber-confident men, starting with Andreessen, who helped nurture the World Wide Web to prosperity in the 1990s before switching to investing. It ends with Zuckerberg, who has the most ambitious plans for linking the world within his own commercial online platform. Along with Andreessen and Zuckerberg theres a bevy of tech Internet billionaires, including Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google, Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn, and the early Facebook investor Peter Thiel. They are a motley crewsome, like Hoffman, are outwardly friendly, cuddly even, while others, like his good friend Thiel, cultivate an aura of detachment and menace. Some, like Brin and Page, one suspects would prefer to be left alone with their computers, while others, like Bezos or Zuckerberg, seek the limelight. Some were born to program, others to make money. But they share common traits: each is convinced of his own brilliance and benevolence, as demonstrated by his wildly successful companies and investments, and lately each is looking beyond his own business plans to promote a libertarian blueprint for us all.