Silicon Valley full of ‘geeks and weirdos’

It’s no secret that President Obama is close to Silicon Valley. In recent months he has appeared at the tech conference South by Southwest, given an interview to the geek bible Recode and even suggested that he might be interested in a career in technology venture capitalism.

So it was interesting that when he spoke in Pittsburgh the other day he made a point of emphasising the limits of the industry. ‘‘Government will never run the way Silicon Valley runs because, by definition, democracy is messy,’’ he said. ‘‘Part of government’s job is dealing with problems that nobody else wants to deal with.

Sometimes I talk to CEOs, they come in and they start telling me about leadership and I say, well, if all I was doing was making a widget or producing an app and I didn’t have to worry about whether poor people could afford the widget or whether the app had some unintended consequences - setting aside my Syria and Yemen portfolio - then [your] suggestions [would be] terrific.’’

He said that it was not possible to ‘‘blow up the system’’ in government as could be done in tech because government itself was not ‘‘inherently wrecked’’. He was totally right.

Silicon Valley leaders have, in recent decades, done staggering work disrupting business and infiltrating every aspect of human existence.

As a consequence they are understandably feted by royalty, governments, conferences organisers and New Yorker profile writers keen to compare them to Leonardo da Vinci. But there are limits to their talents. One is the ability to run governments.

Another, I’d say, after reading Designing Your Life, a self-help title written by two Silicon Valley veterans, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, is life advice.

Which is not to suggest that the book, which is based on a popular class that the former Apple designers give at Stanford and argues that you can design an ‘‘amazing life’’ in the same way that Jonathan Ive designed the iPhone, is awful.

As you would expect from men who have between them helped to craft Apple PowerBooks, original Star Wars action figures and the video games developer Electronic Arts, it looks pretty.

It features half-decent advice such as: be curious; embrace failure; ask for help; write down what you want from life and work; and don’t get stuck on something you have effectively no chance of succeeding at.

However, as with too many Apple products, it is not half as clever as it thinks it is.

The best bits, such as talk of ‘‘flow’’ and ‘‘mind mapping’’, come from elsewhere.

Its endless discussion of ‘‘reframing dysfunctional beliefs that surround life and career decisions’’ is basically what psychotherapy does.

Meanwhile, jargon such as ‘‘anchor problems’’ (overcommitted life choices that keep people stuck and unhappy), acronyms such as AEIOU (standing for ‘‘activities’’, ‘‘environments’’, ‘‘interactions’’, ‘‘objects, ‘‘users’’) and neologisms such as ‘‘fuhgedaboudit’’ not only grate but conceal some mundane thinking.

The lowest moment is when the authors suggest that people engage in the design practice of ‘‘prototyping’’ - ‘‘asking good questions, outing our hidden biases and assumptions, iterating rapidly and creating momentum for a path we’d like to try out’’ - which essentially amounts to trying stuff out before you take the plunge.

Advice my mum gave me when I was nine. If this is what counts as intellectual rigour at Stanford University, which is inextricably linked to the story of tech, it makes me worry for the future of Silicon Valley.

Though the success of this book, which has already become a New York Times bestseller, makes me worry more widely about the future of western civilisation. In the 21st century, we have surrendered so many aspects of our lives to Silicon Valley, from our emails to photos, from leisure to work.

We live with its products every day and night of our existence. Do we really also need to turn to it for guidance in our love lives and careers? Do people really need to seek life and spiritual advice from designers who specialise in making the hinges on pretty laptops?

If nothing else, it seems to me that Silicon Valley types haven’t worked out the ‘‘living’’ thing themselves.

Let’s face it, Silicon Valley is packed with eccentrics and weirdos. At the very least, they work too hard, spend too much time in front of computers, have an unhealthy obsession with living for ever, don’t pay enough taxes, dress badly and have a predilection for a frat boy culture which makes them susceptible to misogyny.

The idea that we should turn to them for direction and in matters of the heart and soul is ridiculous. Read Anna Karenina instead. Or talk to a friend. Or go for a long walk and contemplate nature. Maybe without your smartphone.

The Times, London