It’s Time to Retire the Silicon Valley Mythos

Google, like any corporation, has wide latitude to fire its employees for any number of reasons. And Google, like any corporation, is entitled to attach any conditions it wishes to its philanthropic donations.

So why did the company generate two high-profile scandals in the last month for doing those very things—first by firing an engineer for criticizing the company’s diversity practices, and then today by muscling out critics of its business practices from the New America Foundation, a think tank the company has supported heavily?

Both of these incidents raised hot-button political issues—free speech, gender differences, and political correctness in the case of the heretical engineer, and monopoly power and corporate influence in the case of the populist policy wonks at New America. But the salience of both firings has been magnified, I would argue, because they fly in the face of the way that our society, and especially the media and chattering classes, has historically—and wrongly—seen the technology industry.

In a perceptive 2013 New Yorker article on Silicon Valley’s politics, George Packer (now himself a fellow at New America) wrote:

[I]t’s an article of faith in Silicon Valley that the technology industry represents something more utopian, and democratic, than mere special-interest groups. The information revolution (the phrase itself conveys a sense of business exceptionalism) emerged from the Bay Area counterculture of the sixties and seventies, influenced by the hobbyists who formed the Homebrew Computer Club and by idealistic engineers like Douglas Engelbart, who helped develop the concept of hypertext and argued that digital networks could boost our “collective I.Q.” From the days of Apple’s inception, the personal computer was seen as a tool for personal liberation; with the arrival of social media on the Internet, digital technology announced itself as a force for global betterment. The phrase “change the world” is tossed around Silicon Valley conversations and business plans as freely as talk of “early-stage investing” and “beta tests.”

For many years, the media carried water for this view—partly because of the technology industry’s genuinely idealistic roots, partly because of its role in the ill-fated Arab Spring, and partly because it has been broadly supportive of Democratic candidates and socially liberal causes. We are surprised to see Google wield its power in ways that appear authoritarian when, as John Herrman wrote in the New York Times, technology companies have so ably “put on the costumes of liberal democracies” as a marketing strategy.

The heroic narrative surrounding technology titans has been diminished in recent years by growing questions about privacy, political bias, and monopoly power. But the August axings of an employee and a think tank scholar who made arguments that interfered with Google’s PR interests ought to be enough to retire it altogether.

In limp statements issued after both incidents, Google tried to cling to its feel-good founding premises. “We strongly support the right of Googlers to express themselves,” Google’s CEO said in explaining his decision to fire James Damore for expressing incorrect opinions. “We respect each group’s independence, personnel decisions, and policy perspectives,” a Google spokesperson said of its philanthropic efforts, after compelling evidence surfaced that its executive chairman had leaned on New America to oust Bary Lynn and his team.

Fewer and fewer people are taking such fictions seriously. Compared to any other major corporate interests, the technology industry is not particularly open-minded, particularly democratic, or particularly respectful of individual rights. If we revise our assumptions accordingly, we will be less surprised about what happens in Silicon Valley—and more cynical.

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