Revenge on the nerds 8 reasons to take on tech firms

They’re over-large, under-regulated and of zero conscience, and that’s just for starters

When you’re a columnist you need things to loathe: jeer figures, doofuses, a rota of wallies at which to direct one’s righteous outrage.

I used to have no shortage of anger targets, but since I got hooked on bloody meditation I find myself feeling inconveniently and career-limitingly peaceful.

But through the wind chimes, I’ve got a new cause. I want to sign up to the tech backlash.

Just a year or so ago the conversation was about which Silicon Valley CEO was more Jesus-like? Who was running for President? So much has changed since then. Fake news, hate speech, Trump and Twitter. There are so many reasons the tech giants should get their comeuppance I have made my own little list.

1 These companies (Apple, Alphabet, Facebook, Amazon) have simply been allowed to get unhealthily large and dominant with barely any checks or balances. The tech firms are more powerful than telco AT&T ever was, yet regulators do nothing (AT&T was split up). In this country the Commerce Commission spent millions fighting to stop one firm, NZME (publisher of the New Zealand Herald) from merging with another, Fairfax (Now called Stuff) — a sideshow, while they appear stubbornly uninterested in tackling the real media dominance battle: how Facebook broke the media. I know we’re just little old New Zealand, but we still have sovereignty over our nation, surely? Mark Berry? Can’t you do something? The EU at least managed to fine Google a couple of lazy bills.

2 Some of these tech companies have got richer and richer exploiting the creative content of writers and artists who create things of real value and who can no longer earn a living from doing so.

3 Mark Zuckerberg’s mea culpa, announced in the last few days, that Facebook is going to focus on what he called “meaningful interaction”, is like a drug dealer offering a cut-down dose of its drug, hoping addicts won’t give up the drug completely. Even Zuckerberg’s former mentor, investor Robert McNamee, said in the Guardian that all Zuckerberg is doing is deflecting criticism and leaving users “in peril”.

4 These companies have created technology and thrown it out there, without any sense of responsibility for its potential impact. It’s time for them to be held accountable. Last week Jana Partners, a Wall Street investment firm, wrote to Apple pushing it to look at its products’ health effects, especially on children. Even Facebook founder Sean Parker has recently admitted “God knows what [technology] is doing to our children’s brains”.

5 While it’s funny when bong-sucking entrepreneur Erlich Bachman says in HBO comedy Silicon Valley: “We’re walking in there with three foot c**ks covered in Elvis dust!” in reality, many of these firms have a repugnant, arrogant and ignorant culture. In the upcoming Vanity Fair story “Oh. My god, this is so f***ed up: inside Silicon Valley’s secretive orgiastic dark side”, insiders talked about the creepy tech parties in which young women are exploited and harassed by tech guys who are still making up for getting bullied at school. (Just as bad, they use the revolting term “cuddle puddles”) The romantic image of scrappy, visionary nerds inventing the future in a garage has evolved into a culture of entitled frat boys behaving badly. “Too much swagger and not enough self-awareness,” as one investor said.

6 These giant companies suck millions in profits out of our country but do little to participate as good corporate citizens. If they even have an office here at all, it is tiny. And don’t get started on how much tax they pay. A few years ago Google’s New Zealand operation consisted of three people who would fly back and forth from Sydney to manage sales over here. Apparently, Apple has opened a Wellington office and lured “several employees” from Weta Digital. But there is little transparency about how or where these companies do business or how to hold them accountable. There is no local number to call or door to knock on. And don’t hold your breath that our children might get good jobs working for any of these corporations.

7 Mark Zuckerberg preaches that Facebook’s mission is to connect people. But Johann Hari’s new book Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression and the Unexpected Solutions, out this week, provides convincing evidence that in the digital age people are more lonely than ever. Hari argues the very companies which are trying to “fix” loneliness — Facebook, for example — are the ones which have made people feel more disconnected and depressed in the first place.

8 Is all this technology really making the world a better place? At this week’s CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas some of the innovations were positive but a lot of them were really quite dumb. Do you really need a robot that will fold your laundry or a suitcase that will follow you? Or a virtual reality headset that will make you feel like you are flying on a dinosaur (Okay, maybe that one would be fun.) So that was my five minutes of hate. I suppose I should do a cleansing loving kindness meditation now, but not sure I feel like sending any metta to Mark Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg’s mea culpa . . . that Facebook is going to focus on what he called ‘meaningful interaction’, is like a drug dealer offering a cut-down dose of its drug, hoping addicts won’t give up the drug completely.