WTF?: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us

13

SUPERMONEY

WHAT IS SILICON VALLEY’S ROLE IN THE ECONOMY GONE awry? It is easy to blame the ability of technology to replace human labor for declining wages and increased wealth inequality. But technology is being used for cost reduction rather than to empower people and to reach for the stars not because that is what technology wants, but because it is what the legal and financial system we have built demands.

For all its talk of disruption, Silicon Valley too is often in thrall to that system. The ultimate fitness function for too many entrepreneurs is not the change they want to make in the world, but “the exit,” the sale or IPO that will make them and the venture capitalists who funded them a giant pile of money. It’s easy to point fingers ...