Is Silicon Valley Morally Bankrupt and Toxic? 469
concealment sends this quote from a post about how the goals of many tech companies are at odds with what's good for consumers:
"Since I've been out of the Silicon-Valley-centered tech industry, I've become increasingly convinced that it's morally bankrupt and essentially toxic to our society. Companies like Google and Facebook — in common with most public companies — have interests that are frequently in conflict with the well-being of — I was going to say their customers or their users, but I'll say 'people' in general, since it's wider than that. People who use their systems directly, people who don't — we're all affected by it, and although some of the outcomes are positive a disturbingly high number of them are negative: the erosion of privacy, of consumer rights, of the public domain and fair use, of meaningful connections between people and a sense of true community, of beauty and care taken in craftsmanship, of our very physical well-being. No amount of employee benefits or underfunded Google.org projects can counteract that. Over time, I've come to consider that this situation is irremediable, given our current capitalist system and all its inequalities. To fix it, we're going to need to work on social justice and rethinking how we live and work and relate to each other. Geek toys like self-driving cars and augmented reality sunglasses won't fix it. Social networks designed to identify you to corporations so they can sell you more stuff won't fix it. Better ad targeting or content matching algorithms definitely won't fix it."
Re:Obligatory (Score:3, Informative)
This crap is so ridiculous. Article in short...
Company I worked at got bought by Google. They kept me on. Then Google wouldn't let me switch to a technical position since I wasn't a technical person. Jerks.
Google+ doesn't want me to use a handle. I'm a queer/transgender female so that's offensive.
I went back to school for something kinda technical and found out I hated it, so I quit school again. Still angry that Google didn't hire me for a technical position without any technical credentials.
After I quit, Google tried to hire me a few times for other stuff. How dare they.
I've since decided that ToS minutiae at unrelated companies and requiring people to use their names on a voluntary social network that nobody uses demonstrate that an entire industry / area is morally bankrupt and toxic. Corporations are evil corporationy corporations, so I started an open source gardening project... yay me.
Some day when Google learns to give me what I want for no reason, I'll take their offers more seriously and decide they're not evil anymore.
Seriously, wtf... a whole post just so someone can cry us a river? Some people are desperate for decent work, and it's borderline insulting to read entitled garbage like this.
No (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Informative)
...but it helps!
Re:Nothing is broken except how you see things (Score:5, Informative)
This is not because this system has allowed great things that it is exempt from any criticism or that alternatives can not exist. Half of the achievements of the 20th century was publicly funded, let's not forget about that. Corporation are not the only way to make things happen.
Look at Bletchley park, look at the NASA. Look at the Bell Labs, which are an hybrid entity of public obligations and private funds and which invented Unix, C, and radioastronomy amongst other things.
Great things can be done through capitalism, free entrepreneuship and competitions, but let's not assume that this is the only way.
By the way, let's review the invention that you attribute to corporations :
So be careful with the examples you choose and realize that the computer revolution started as a governmental effort to crack German code, continued in the US as a Navy project, was given its best tools by the Bell Labs, an entity whose structure would make most business angels cringe and that software development is now driven in big part by a bunch of OSS idealists that often work on it for free.
Internet itself started as a university and military project. It was heavily funded by the government (Hello, M.Gore) before corporations could understand the interest of this thing. Afterwards, they tried very hard to break and control it, unsuccessfully. (Look at AOL, look at what MSN was supposed to be at first)
I don't deny that capitalism or even corporatism can drive innovation, but if you want examples, computer science is not the best place to get them. The feeling I get is that groundbreaking innovations are usually publicly funded while incremental innovations are made by corporations.
Re:If the Silicon Valley is toxic ... (Score:2, Informative)
Click through and actually read TFA.
1) It's a she, not a he
2) It's not in a newspaper, its on a personal blog - exactly where this sort of thing belongs.
Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Informative)
Skud's an experienced programmer. As is the case with many experienced computer programmers, she didn't have a computer science degree. Please see any of the countless debates on Slashdot on whether computer science degrees are necessary for programming. She wasn't switching to a technical position: she was getting forced out of a technical position she had held for three years. She wasn't switching to a handle; her name is Skud, that is the name she normally uses, and that is what Google's official policy supposedly defines as the name to use for a Google account.
Much of the article is a critique of Silicon Valley culture in general, and why she's glad she left.