WHAT TECH CALLS THINKING

A skeptical look at the self-congratulatory ideology of Silicon Valley.

Interviewed by often worshipful journalists, tech billionaires invariably describe the philosophy that overcame the obstacles to unspeakable riches. Already familiar with myths, Daub, a professor of comparative literature and Germanic studies at Stanford, dug into the murky motivations of Silicon Valley gurus. The result is this slim volume, and readers who worry that a discussion of ideas by an academic must involve a hard slog will be pleasantly surprised. According to the author, there is less than meets the eye to disruptive and revolutionary, adjectives beloved of tech entrepreneurs for ventures better described as “maybe not legal.” Thus, Uber and Lyft are certainly destroying traditional taxi services by making rides cheaper, but this is largely accomplished by paying employees less, converting them to independent contractors with no bargaining power or benefits. Once significant blemishes on a resume, dropping out and even failure have become cool. However, Daub points out that while a member of the White middle class who drops out of an elite college to get rich will likely fail, the result is not the welfare office but rather a return to college and a degree. For the most part, failure only hurts those who have no safety net to catch them. Tech billionaires often extol thinkers who were widely known a generation ago but are less familiar today. They fare poorly under Daub’s gimlet eye. Marshall McLuhan famously wrote that a communication platform exerts more influence than its content, a concept that is catnip to tech entrepreneurs who make platforms. Those who provide content, “be it reviews on Yelp, self-published books on Amazon, your own car and waking hours on Uber,” earn much less, sometimes nothing. Billionaires also remain enamored of Ayn Rand, who argued that the world is divided into creators and parasites and that the creator is above the law.

Delightful proof that getting rich does not make you a deep thinker.