I've been looking at the intertwining of Silicon Valley business culture, government and society in general and I've been getting nervous.
We have very powerful and wealthy people like Peter Thiel who not only supported Trump, but also thinks democracy and freedom are incompatible (though those are only a few of his views that worry me).
But it's not limited to just Thiel. There is, I feel, a general disdain of the masses of humanity in a lot of Silicon Valley companies. For example, Larry Page deciding that he'd rather give his money to Elon Musk rather than charity. And of course the transhumanist movement which is full to the brim of Ayn Rand fanatics and free market fundamentalists. When I pointed out the problem of a Randian society in the context of technological employment, one Rand type handwaved it away by saying "people will just get upgraded". Would a system that coerces people ("work or starve" is coercive in my opinion) to upgrade if they don't want to be a bad thing? There was a later part of that conversation which was richly ironic wherein the same person said that it was the government that was really coercive. Uh-huh.
Really, it seems that the overarching culture in Silicon Valley seems to be that "society doesn't matter, technology will sort it all out". Frankly, that strikes me as incredibly ignorant.
Not helping matters is the fact that these companies have a lot of money and influence over practically all people in the world. An effect known as the filter bubble is undoubtedly one of the things exacerbating political divisiveness these days.
But that doesn't matter to them. filter bubbles and political lobbying are just "good business"; sure it screws everyone else over, but so what? You have a company to run and you need to keep it in the black.
So ultimately I'm left flustered. What the hell can be done? Heck, I'm contributing to the problem! I use Google Chrome, I browse Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, et al. I use Google search instead of DuckDuckGo. And so on.
Maybe I just need a digital sabbatical or something.
![Confused :?](./images/smilies/icon_confused.gif)