Silicon Valley: Evil Or Redeemable?
At TED 2019 in Vancouver, I participated in a debate titled, "Silicon Valley: evil or redeemable". My position was that Silicon Valley is redeemable. I used the following arguments to defend my position:
1. The idea of Silicon Valley being "evil" mainly comes from social media's role in elections, user privacy violations, and publication of inappropriate materials. These issues are limited to three companies - Facebook, Google (YouTube), and Twitter. Silicon Valley is much bigger than that.
2. Silicon Valley creates tools which can be used for good or bad. Should the creator of the tools be held responsible for all the bad done with the tools?
3. In the year 2000, 700M people had access to the Internet. Today, over 3.2B people have access to the Internet i.e. around half the world has access to unlimited knowledge. It has happened mainly because of Silicon Valley.
4. Silicon Valley is fifth largest economy in the world, ~$2.7T, and is bigger than the UK economy.
5. Silicon Valley is a meritocracy. People invest in ideas. More than half the startups in Silicon Valley are founded by immigrants.
6. Silicon Valley is probably the only place in the world where failure gives you credibility. A startup founder can raise capital and if the startup fails, the investors don't become the founder's enemies. They are more likely to invest in the founder's next startup and the founder's employability goes up.
7. People openly share ideas and that makes the ideas better. It is an environment of constant learning.
8. Companies are relatively more egalitarian in Silicon Valley compared to the rest of the country. For example, 20,000 Google employees walked out to protest against the severance paid to an executive who was accused of sexual harassment. And, the management was fine with the walkout. This level of protest in a non-unionized company is unprecedented. Another example is Salesforce was in favor of tax increase on itself to help the city of San Francisco.
9. Silicon Valley is called Silicon Valley because at some point in the last 70 years, there were 65+ semiconductor companies in the area. Silicon is a material used to make semiconductors. Hence, the name. Semiconductors are the foundation of all electronics. Without semiconductors, we would not have the Internet, PC, smartphones, electric cars, AI, etc.
10. People in Silicon Valley acknowledge that there have been gaps in funding female founders and the matter is being addressed. California is the first state in the US to pass a law that requires the company boards to have female board directors.
What exactly is the sin that Silicon Valley has to redeem itself from? I understand that it is not perfect. The responsibility of social media companies still needs to be figured out. Women representation has to be increased. Privacy concerns need to be addressed. However, the impact of Silicon Valley in the world has been net positive by a wide margin. Do you want to go back in a world with no Internet, no Google, no iPhone, no Uber, no Doordash, no Netflix, no Whatsapp, no Tesla?
The debate was less than ten minutes and was structured like a cage match i.e. not very serious. The winner was chosen based on how loudly the audience yelled in the participant's favor. Debates like these are not won on facts and reason. I lost :)
