Keen on... Silicon valley: how we need to scale down our self-regard and grow up | techcrunch
- Select a language for the TTS:
- UK English Female
- UK English Male
- US English Female
- US English Male
- Australian Female
- Australian Male
- Language selected: (auto detect) - EN
Play all audios:
Oh dear, it hasn’t been a good few weeks for Silicon Valley. Along with the NSA scandal, there appears to be more and more criticism of Big Tech from mainstream, heavyweight American
journalists like Nicholas Thompson and Paul Krugman. And leading the charge in this Silicon Valley bashing is the _New Yorker_ staff writer and award-winning author George Packer. In both
his new book, _The Unwinding_, and particularly in his recent _New Yorker_ story “Change The World”, Packer warns that the love affair is over and Silicon Valley has lost its resonance with
the rest of America. Packer should know. He grew up in Mountain View when it was a sleepy little town in the Valley of Heart’s Delight, not much different from any other middle class
American community. But now, Packer told me, the “massive wealth” in Mountain View and the rest of Silicon Valley makes it “as far from North Carolina as Burma.” So what needs to change in
Silicon Valley, I asked Packer, if it is to make itself relevant once again with the rest of America. Firstly, Packer told me, Silicon Valley needs to develop “daring” and “adventurous”
technological advances that solve big problems. And secondly, he says, we’ve got to “scale down” our “self-regard” and recognize that we aren’t essentially different from any other
successful industry and thus aren’t really changing the world. So are we going to listen to the advice of grown-ups like George Packer? Or are we going to continue to build products designed
to make life more efficient for privileged 20-year-olds, thereby making ourselves more and more irrelevant to the needs of ordinary Americans?