Disrupting Reality: If Tech Wants to Continue Growing, Does It Have To Stop Acting Like an Outsider?

Tech has long derived identity and strength from its positioning as the intelligent outsider. The one who knows better but is scorned by those it benefits. So it has used that status as a shield and a sword, a means of defining both one's superiority and one's separation. 

The Revenge of the Nerds theme became a kind of anthem, a paeon to the guy who couldn't ever get the girl, until he got the money and with that, the inevitable denoument for the dumb jock who had looks and breeding.

So tech has fed on that image. It doesn't encourage change, it disrupts. It doesn't embrace, it dominates.

This has produced one of the most monumental growth stories in world history. So yes, it has worked. Up till now. 

The difference now is that there is literally no industry - and virtually no society of any consequence - on earth that has not been profoundly affected by the power of technology. Technology and the people who know how to create, implement and optimize it are everywhere: where you have to, need to and want to be.

By and large, this impact has been positive. But the reality is that tech has become 'The Man' it has so long scorned and worked assiduously to undermine. It's BFF is finance, it's beneficial outcomes too often concentrated on a small cadre, its harms too frequently impacting those least able to withstand them.

We have seen, as the following article explains, the growing conflation of convenience with a reduction in personal interaction. Emailing rather than meeting, texting rather than talking. Buy algorithms to do your interfacing for you. Only connect with those you choose. Entrepreneurs routinely call for Silicon Valley to secede from the rest of California, the logical end game of a process by which 'sharing' has become taking - and hopelessly blind to the reality of its dependence on the society that succors it, for all of its idiosyncratic and wasteful behavior.

The fact is that future growth will depend on greater not less adoption, adaptation and acceptance. The world is beginning to push back. The tax incentives and political indulgences and commercial accommodations are being challenged or withdrawn as the impacts' benefits are increasingly concentrated on a narrower band. It may be time for tech to shed its proud status as 'the other' and come in from the cold. Its products and services are everywhere, its leaders increasingly undifferentiated from those they advise, compete with and supplant. To maintain that growth, it could be necessary to acknowledge the mutuality of interests.  Outsiders are tolerated, insiders are embraced. JL

Janko Roettgers comments in GigaOm:

A pattern is starting to emerge — one of a app-powered service that has the single goal of taking out the “friction” of interacting with the the people who live around you.
Don’t feel like talking to anyone ever again? Don’t worry, there’s an app for that.

Earlier this week, San Francisco-based Melian Labs launched its MyTime app on Android, promising to take the hassle out of making appointments by letting you book services from local businesses directly through the app. On the surface, this may be a good idea. But combine it with other apps and services meant to make your life easier, and a troubling pattern is starting to emerge — one of a app-powered service that has the single goal of taking out the “friction” of interacting with the the people who live around you.

Here are just a few examples:

Uber. Love it or hate it, Uber is changing the way people get around. People with enough money not to rely on public transportation, that is. The company likes paint itself as an alternative to car ownership, while aggressively going against traditional taxi cabs — but it also directly competes with bus and rail, and has the potential to further stigmatize public transporation as a way for poor people to get around.

If Silicon Valley truly wants to get real, then it has to stop shielding itself from reality, and become part of society, instead of pledging to disrupt it from the outside.

Adding to that is Uber’s built-in reality filter. Ever wondered why cabbies are so much more moody than Uber drivers, even though both have long shifts and endure lots of stress driving through traffic and dealing with customers all day? There’s an easy explanation. Uber drivers have to keep up a high rating to stay in the game, and no one likes complainers, so it literally pays to lie through your teeth as an uber driver. “This is the best job ever!”

Shyp, Taskrabbit & Co. Don’t want to stand in line? Then make someone else do it for you. It’s the new servant economy, with the added benefit that you don’t have to ever visit your local post office, dry cleaner or supermarket again. You know, those places where you used to run into other people living in your community, and possibly get a glimpse into their lives.

Birchbox, Barkbox, Amazon Prime. I’ve always loved getting mail, and I also love ecommerce. But every now and then I have to remind myself that the premise of the endless shelf space doesn’t actually make a whole lot of sense if you are just buying things that are also available in your neighborhood store. At that point, you’re just trying to avoid your neighbors — and as a result, you’re removing money from your local community.

Homeschooling. Education is a polarizing topic. I’m a parent myself, and my wife and I decided early on to send our daughters to a public school, as opposed to a private or charter school. I also know that this is a decision every parent has to make for themselves to find a solution that’s best for their child. That being said, I thought it was troubling to read about the latest Silicon Valley fad in Wired recently: Parents who are “hacking education” by homeschooling their kids. From the story:

“This may come as a shock to those of us who still associate homeschooling with fundamentalists eager to shelter their kids from the evils of the secular state. But it turns out that homeschooling has grown more mainstream over the last few years. According to the most recent statistics, the share of school-age kids who were homeschooled doubled between 1999 and 2012, from 1.7 to 3.4 percent. And many of those new homeschoolers come from the tech community.”

The article goes on to describe how techies who “never liked school” themselves are now taking their kids out of school to teach them at home, and paints homeschooling as taking DIY to the next level. What it fails to mention is the idea of raising citizens. Of having children play and learn with others who aren’t like them, and who may not be able to afford having one parent stay at home to play teacher. This is troubling for us as a society — in many parts of America, schools are now more segregated than they used to be in the 1960s — but it’s also another example for Silicon Valley building an alternate reality, devote of the problems the rest of the country is facing, instead of trying to solve these problems together.

The collapse of thecommunity

I know, the world isn’t black and white, and there are good things to many of the businesses mentioned above as well. But what gets me really about this trend is that it wasn’t supposed to be that way.

I still remember listening to Meetup.com co-founder Scott Heiferman talk at an early O’Reilly conference in 2005. Back then, Heiferman, told his audience that the book Bowling Alone, which chronicles the collapse of the American community, inspired him to launch Meetup, with the intent to get people to go out and come together again. At the time, many of the so-called Web 2.0 services had similar ideas, be it Upcoming.org, Craigslist, or even local blog networks like Metblogs.

Fast forward a decade, and a lot of that spirit has been replaced by the imperatives of the sharing economy. It’s not about meeting your neighbors anymore, it’s about putting them to work.

The irony is that all of this happens as the tech community is starting to grow a conscience, and looking to “give back” through volunteerism and initiatives like Ron Conway’s 111 initiative. Those are noble efforts, but if Silicon Valley truly wants to get real, then it has to stop shielding itself from reality, and become part of society, instead of pledging to disrupt it from the outside.