{"id":338494,"date":"2017-04-16T21:00:43","date_gmt":"2017-04-16T13:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1476950"},"modified":"2017-04-16T21:00:43","modified_gmt":"2017-04-16T13:00:43","slug":"stop-blaming-the-tech-industry-for-the-worlds-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/stop-blaming-the-tech-industry-for-the-worlds-problems\/","title":{"rendered":"Stop blaming the tech industry for the world\u2019s problems"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Everything we do is terrible, says the trope. We\u2019re oppressive. We\u2019re exploitative. We\u2019re sexist, racist, classist. We deify horrible frat-boy brogrammer assholes, while funding, and celebrating, morally bankrupt apps that exist to stand in for their mothers and\/or servants. We destroy jobs and displace the working class. We cater to the rich and privileged urban elite, while the poor masses fall further behind. How can we possibly claim to be building a better world?<\/p>\n

And the thing is, you can, in isolation, actually make a pretty good case that the tech industry is guilty of all of these things. In isolation. But pull back just a little, and it\u2019s hard to deny that most of these things are symptoms<\/em>, not problems \u2014 symptoms of the world in which we exist. Compared to the rest of that world, the tech industry is, mostly, a beacon of hope and progress.<\/p>\n

The congenital sexism of our industry has been the subject of whole acres of pixels over the last few years; no need belaboring that point. But at the same time, InHerSight, an organization devoted to providing \u201ca powerful and representative picture of what it\u2019s really like for women in the workplace,\u201d reports<\/a> that tech is rated by its respondents as the best<\/em> industry for women to work in. Yes, you read that correctly. The best of all industries. Despite its manifold, manifest flaws.<\/p>\n

Is the upper echelon of tech executives heavily, wildly disproportionately dominated by men? It sure is. But consider the context: specifically, that we live in a world where there are more S&P 1500 CEOs named John<\/a> than there are women. (This is also true<\/a> of the FTSE 100.)<\/p>\n

Do the major tech companies\u2019 diversity reports<\/a> make for fairly grim reading<\/a>? Yes, they do. But they\u2019re not outright chilling<\/em>, unlike, say, reading that<\/a>: \u201cracial resentment played a larger role in the 2016 [American] election than economic concerns \u2026 Trump successfully leveraged existing resentment towards African Americans in combination with emerging fears of increased racial diversity in America to reshape the presidential electorate.\u201d Meanwhile in the UK, well \u2014<\/p>\n

People complain that technology\u2019s priorities are pathologically skewed and wrong:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

climate change
global unrest
wealth inequality
lack of access to medicine<\/p>\n

and our tech resources go to food delivery robots for rich people https:\/\/t.co\/BPD4LLhC5T<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Spanish California (@_danilo) April 12, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote><\/div>\n

But let me remind you that the most powerful nation in the world recently wasted literally trillions<\/em><\/a> of dollars on a useless war that consumed hundreds of thousands of lives and led to massive destabilization and unrest. Fortunately, the current US administration\u2026 uh\u2026 yeah, that sentence isn\u2019t going to go anywhere good, is it.<\/p>\n

Let remind me you that the parasitical finance industry now consumes some 30%<\/a> of all<\/em> US corporate profits, and counting<\/a>. Of course, because of their important work, the rest of the world gets\u2026 well\u2026 look, the important thing is that they\u2019re making an enormous amount of money, OK? Don\u2019t ask what the rest of us receive in exchange for that 30% tithe of all profits. No good\u2019s going to come of that.<\/p>\n

Almost everyone I know in the tech industry (obviously there\u2019s selection bias there, but hear me out) genuinely wants to do more good for the world, and to help people. But we live in late capitalism1<\/sup>, which straitjackets our options. Even Elon Musk had to hit the jackpot with PayPal before he could build Tesla and SpaceX. Young frat boys are the entrepreneurs of choice because they\u2019re the ones who feel like they can afford to take that risk in the world in which we live. Privileged pretty-people assholes<\/a> have invaded the tech industry because it has become a locus of power and of cultural cachet. All this was inevitable, in late capitalism.<\/p>\n

And please note: yesterday\u2019s expensive luxuries are tomorrow\u2019s low-cost necessities. Mobile phones were outrageously offensive symbols of investment-banker excess, once. Passenger jets used to be so expensive that you were expected to pay for your tickets in installments. The world\u2019s first CD players cost thousands of dollars. Now CDs are obsolete in most countries, and a side-hustle for Kentucky Fried Chicken in others:<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong. I understand where this rage comes from, and to some extent, that well of fury speaks well<\/em> of tech. Because while some of it simply comes from the rage of the powerless against the powerful \u2014 and while it may not feel like it, my fellow nerds, we now find ourselves in the heart of perhaps the world\u2019s primary locus of power \u2014 some of it comes from the sense, the expectation, the hope that tech should be better.<\/em><\/p>\n

And you know what? They\u2019re right. We should be better; much better than what we so often see around us. We\u2019re the ones building tomorrow, and setting its standards. No one else is going to improve things for us. It is literally our job.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s hard to build a better world, and it\u2019s especially hard when you\u2019re enmeshed in a system whose primary design goal often seems to be to perpetuate power, wealth, and privilege for those who already have it. So cut the tech industry a little slack. We can\u2019t help but reflect the sewers that birthed us from time to time. But remember what Oscar Wilde once said: we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.<\/em><\/p>\n\n

1<\/sup>For the record, I am a capitalist, and I believe in capitalism and its power to lift the world out of poverty; but at the same time, its excesses need to be checked and corralled from time to time, and our collective failure to do so has allowed it to go all Sorcerer\u2019s Apprentice<\/a> on us over the last few decades.<\/p>\n

Featured Image: Steve Snodgrass<\/a>\/Flickr<\/a> UNDER A CC BY 2.0<\/a> LICENSE<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"\" Everything we do is terrible, says the trope. We’re oppressive. We’re exploitative. We’re sexist, racist, classist. We deify horrible frat-boy brogrammer assholes, while funding, and celebrating, morally bankrupt apps that exist to stand in for their mothers and\/or servants. We destroy jobs and displace the working class. We cater to the rich and privileged urban elite, while… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

\"\"\/ <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5817,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[59,66,26],"class_list":["post-338494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-media","tag-techcrunch","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5817"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338494\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}