How Silicon Valley is disrupting democracy

This book is particularly effective in dispelling the myth that these entrepreneurs were somehow gifted visionaries of the future (and investors) that the rest of us simply couldn’t understand or predict.

Sure, someone like Thiel made a wise investment in Facebook early on, but he also made some very costly mistakes with that stake. As Lalka points out, Thiel’s Founders Fund dumped millions of shares shortly after Facebook went public, and Thiel himself went from owning 2.5% of the company in 2012 to 0.000004% in less than a decade (around the same time Facebook hit its trillion-dollar mark). assessment). 2008, 2009 and beyond, when he effectively short-circuited one of the longest bull markets in world history, and you’d think it was less an oracle and more an ideology that made something big happen. Risks that are paid.

One of Lalaka’s favorite mantras The Venture Alchemist That “words matter.” Indeed, he uses many of these entrepreneurs’ words to expose their hypocrisy, bullying, anti-teenageism, casual racism and – yes – outright greed and selfishness. It’s not a flattering picture, to say the least.

Unfortunately, instead of simply letting those words and deeds speak for themselves, Lalaka repeatedly commands readers to point fingers or judge these men too harshly even after writing about their many transgressions. Whether this is an attempt to convey some sense of purpose or to remind readers that these entrepreneurs are complex and complicated men making difficult decisions, it just doesn’t work. Absolutely.

For one thing, Lalka clearly has strong opinions of her own about the behavior of these entrepreneurs—opinions she doesn’t try to hide. At one point in the book he suggests that Kalanick’s alpha-male, dominance-at-any-cost approach to running Uber is “almost, but not quite” rape, which is probably not the comparison you’d make if you wanted to. Seems like an arbiter of fairness. And if he really wants readers to come to a different conclusion about these men, he certainly doesn’t give many reasons to do so. Just telling us to “judge less and understand more” feels worse than a cop-out. It comes across as “almost, but not quite” victim-blaming — as if we’re somehow just as guilty for using their platform and buying into their self-mythology.

“In many ways, Silicon Valley has become the antithesis of what its early pioneers set out to be.”

Mariatje Shake

The book ends with the same depressing empty platitudes. “Future technologies must be pursued thoughtfully, ethically and cautiously,” says Lalka after spending 313 pages showing readers how these entrepreneurs have willfully ignored all three adverbs. What they have created instead are giant wealth-creating machines that divide, distract and spy on us. Maybe it’s just me, but that kind of behavior seems appropriate not just for judgment, but for action.

So what exactly do you do with a group of men who seem incapable of serious self-reflection—men who clearly believe in their own greatness and who are comfortable making decisions on behalf of the millions who didn’t elect them, and whose values ​​are essential to those who do? Don’t share?

Of course, you regulate them. Or at least you regulate the companies they run and fund. In Marietje Schake Tech coupeReaders are presented with a road map for how such regulation might take shape, along with an eye-opening account of how much power has been ceded to these corporations over the past 20 years.