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Hey Silicon Valley! Not every problem can be solved by giving people internet
access or teaching them to code
This might go without saying, but I’m probably one of the biggest boosters of
technology there is, especially when it comes to the benefits of internet
access and the startup ecosystem that has grown up around it: it’s what I write
about, I use the internet and mobile technology all day, and I think internet
access should probably be a human right. But even I know that there are some
problems in the world — and some fairly significant ones — that can’t be solved
by simply giving people internet access and teaching them how to code.
Unfortunately, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and some tech entrepreneurs
either don’t know this or are deliberately choosing to ignore it. And by doing
so, they are only reinforcing the image of Silicon Valley and the
technology-startup scene as a bubble of unrealistic expectations, if not
outright blinkered ignorance about the world around it.
Zuckerberg’s new venture, known as Internet.org, is a joint project aimed at
bringing easy and/or cheap internet access to those who don’t have it —
primarily in non-Western countries — and arrived wrapped in a motivational and
humanitarian-themed video that was largely based on some sections of a speech
by John F. Kennedy (sections that were chosen rather selectively, as Alexis
Madrigal notes in a post at The Atlantic). In this vision, internet access
pretty much solves everything, and makes people’s lives immeasurably awesome:
Homelessness is not a “glitch”
The other exhibit in my Silicon Valley bubble-mentality case comes from
entrepreneur Patrick McConlogue, who wrote a spectacularly thoughtless post for
Medium — not the first one from a young entrepreneur, I should note — about how
he believes that homeless people would be a lot better off if they learned how
to program (McConlogue is a New Yorker, but I think his viewpoint is an Eastern
extension of a common Silicon Valley mindset). He says he plans to conduct an
experiment in which he offers a specific homeless man $100 or three books on
JavaScript to see which he will take:
“I like to think I can see the few times when [a homeless person is] a wayward
puzzle piece. It’s that feeling you get when you know the waiter, the cashier,
the janitor is in the wrong place—they are smart, brilliant even. This is my
attempt to fix one of those lost pieces.”
In an interview with the Huffington Post, the writer — a 23-year-old founder of
Echo Republic — says that as a software engineer, “I see a glitch and I want to
fix the glitch.” If I didn’t know better, I would think that McConlogue had
been invented by author and internet gadfly Evgeny Morozov, who has become
known for criticizing the technology-based mindset he calls “solutionism,”
which sees the internet and gadgets as the answer to virtually any societal
problem. McConlogue is like the poster child for this viewpoint.
In fact, the “technology will fix you” mentality in the piece was so
overwhelming that at least some people in my Twitter stream thought it was a
joke — a satire of Silicon Valley’s startup mentality and the focus on
programming as the cure for every ill. Within a matter of hours, Harvard law
student Sarah Jeong had created a Medium post that consisted of entries from a
fictional advice column, where the answer to every personal problem is to learn
how to code.
After reaching its peak at 117CE, the Roman Empire collapsed due to its total
inability to teach its citizens to code.—
Anil Dash (@anildash) August 22, 2013
A certain tone-deaf eagerness
Jessica Roy at Betabeat told McConlogue that “the homeless are not bit players
in your imaginary entrepreneurial novella,” and Ezra Klein at the Washington
Post said the most objectionable part of the essay was the writer’s attempt to
“absorb this homeless man — a real person, with an actual history that
McConlogue can’t really intuit by looking into his eyes — into his precanned,
triumphant programmer narrative.” Kevin Roose at New York magazine said “Check
back soon for McConlogue’s next post: ‘How Ruby on Rails Fixes Racism.’”
In an update and response to the outcry over his original post, McConlogue says
he remains undaunted by the criticism he received, and that Leo — the homeless
person he mentioned — has accepted his offer of programming instruction manuals
and a free Chromebook instead of $100. He also says that he plans a meetup in
New York in the future in order to “discuss some of the feedback” to his post
and suggests this would be “a good venue for non-profits to connect around the
issue of homelessness.”
It seems obvious that McConlogue’s heart is in the right place, and that he
genuinely wants to help this young homeless man, just as it seems obvious (or
at least arguable) that Mark Zuckerberg actually wants to try and improve the
lives of people around the world who are without internet access — although it
also seems likely that Internet.org is designed in part to create more demand
for Facebook. And it seems tone-deaf at best to describe a lack of internet
access as “one of the biggest problems” the world faces. What about access to
clean drinking water?
The flaws in technological solutionism
Dan Gillmor made another good point in a post about Internet.org at The
Guardian, which is that having internet access isn’t really going to help
people in countries like China or Iran or dozens of other places because those
countries restrict what their citizens can do online — in some cases
significantly — and also track them and their behavior. Shouldn’t we be using
our influence to push for a more open internet for those countries, not just
access?
That’s what makes both McConlogue’s piece and Internet.org so frustrating in a
way: they are both well-meaning, and yet still betray a misunderstanding about
the problems they are allegedly targeting. Leo may strike McConlogue as “smart,
logical and articulate,” but he could be dealing with a host of things that
have driven him to where he is, from drug abuse or mental illness to family
problems and other complex psychological issues.
Learning to code may be valuable, but the idea that Leo is going to become some
kind of entrepreneurial superstar after being given a few JavaScript manuals is
pretty laughable. Could it happen? Sure. Is it even remotely likely? No.
The kind of bootstrapped, do-it-yourself mentality that McConlogue’s post is
filled with is an admirable trait, and much good has come from it. And
Zuckerberg’s focus on internet access for all has a powerful rationale to it as
well, and could improve the lives of many. But it’s possible to admire those
things and yet still be disappointed in how they fall short of even trying to
understand the fundamental nature of the problems they are allegedly trying to
solve.
Update: For more thoughtful criticism of this trend, check out this open letter
to Mark Zuckerberg from UC Berkeley sociologist Jen Schradie about his
technological determinism.
Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Shutterstock / noporn and Flickr user
Jason McElweenie
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