Beware The Pretty People
The tech industry used to be home to a disproportionate number of misfits and weirdos. Geeks. Nerds. People who needed to know how machines worked; needed to take them apart, make them better, and put them back together again. People who existed a little apart from society’s established hierarchy … and often saw that hierarchy as another machine to be deconstructed and improved.
That is no longer the case. Now that technology is the dominant cultural and economic force of our time, and startup execs have become rock stars, the establishment is flocking to the tech industry. Rap stars and movie stars want to be tech investors. “Tech firms and consultants both appeal to the growing number of students who want to gain the right experience to start their own business,” observes The Economist. “Elite Grads in Business Flock to Tech,” concurs the Wall Street Journal.
Tech is becoming the finishing school and springboard for the upper-middle-class, the way law and finance were a decade ago. Now that the tech industry is cool, the pretty people are taking over, flooding out of top-tier universities with MBAs and social graces and carefully coiffed hair, shouldering the misfits and weirdos out of the way. And often, paradoxically, despite their privileged backgrounds, they have much less appetite for risk.
Oh, many pay lip service to being weird and different. Our whole culture does these days —
— as long as you’re not dangerously weird; as long as you’re not a genuine rebel; as long as you don’t actually try to challenge anything important. The establishment scions pouring into tech take on the trappings of subversion, while remaining fundamentally conformist. Meanwhile, rampant success inevitably causes the former tech counterculture to morph into posturing “Prada revolutionaries,” as Klint Finley puts it.
There was a tech counterculture, and it mattered. The Internet didn’t have to be so free and open. Governments have been trying to impose their demands on it for many years. Consider the long-ago attempts to impose bizarre, unworkable standards such as X.400 instead of the simple email addresses we still use. Consider the crypto wars of the 1990s, the attempted crippling of SSL, and the prosecution of Phil Zimmermann. But the tech industry ignored, supplanted, and/or fought back — and won — against these attempts.
To be fair, it’s still doing that today. The post-Snowden growth in end-to-end encryption is heartening. Everyone fought hard for net neutrality, and won. But these aren’t examples of an underdog fighting back; these are examples of a new giant protecting its turf. Meanwhile, as Dan Gillmor says in Why I’m Saying Goodbye to Apple, Google and Microsoft, “We are losing control over the tools that once promised equal opportunity in speech and innovation—and this has to stop.”
It seems to me that as the establishment slowly infects and merges with the tech industry, and vice versa, the people who actually do think differently–“the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers”–will be, and are being, pushed out. (In some cases simply priced out.) It’s all too easy to imagine the American tech industry in ten years as a new Wall Street, a giant machine built largely to siphon yet more power and privilege up to people who already have too much.
This is why I like Bitcoin: say what you like about it, such as that you want it to “die in a fire” because it’s a libertarian conspiracy, it is genuinely weird, disruptive, and potentially dangerous to the status quo. This is why I have a soft spot for Travis Kalanick: for all of Uber’s flaws, someone needed to tear down the walls of the established taxi cartels.
Technology is, indisputably, the premier force for change in the world today. Every startup is an engine of change, and a potentially enormously powerful one. But we still tend to measure their success wholly in terms of millions raised, billions in valuation, revenues, profits, and timeline to IPO. That’s not genuinely subversive. That’s not truly disruptive. That’s establishment talk.
“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. But then, so did the divine right of kings,” said the great Ursula Le Guin at the National Book Awards.
I believe capitalism is excellent … up to a point. (I don’t believe anyone who has travelled in the developing world as much as I have can reasonably think otherwise.) But is that inflection point at which capitalism offers diminishing returns still ahead of us, here in the rich world? Will we live in capitalism (as we know it) forever? It seems unlikely.
While we do, though, we need the weirdos, the rebels, the counterculture, to be gathering together and founding companies. Because while we live in capitalism, no art collective, no protest, will be as effective an engine of change as a successful startup.
What’s more, there has never been a better time to try to found a genuinely subversive company than right now. Consider Y Combinator’s new openness to not-for-profit startups. Consider the remarkable recipient list of Reddit Donate. It seems to me that there is a hunger for real change out there. A huge audience. You might even call it a market.
Capitalism won’t be violently overthrown. Nor should it be. Whatever system(s) may one day supplant it will instead grow quietly in the shadows of its tallest towers, and coexist for years. But in order for that to happen, I believe we need our true iconoclasts, dangerous freethinkers, and weird subversives to flock to the tech industry — rather than recoil from it in disgust, now that the pretty people have invaded.
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Chamath Palihapitiya’s Social+Capital Raising $450M For New Fund, Filing Shows
Social+Capital Partnership, the investment firm founded by former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya, is raising $450 million for its third fund, dubbed “Social Capital Partnership III, L.P.,” according to regulatory documents filed today.
The new fund represents a significant boost in size from Social+Capital’s second fund, which targeted a $325 million raise beginning in early 2013. Social+Capital’s first fund, which began raising in 2011, was $275 million in size.
It’s important to note that Social Capital Partnership III seems to be in the initial stages of fundraising: While the offering amount is pegged at $450 million, zero dollars worth of stock have been sold as of today, the filing states.
Historically, Social+Capital has targeted a range of investments, with an especially notable focus on companies in the healthcare, education, and financial tech spaces. Its portfolio includes Slack, Wealthfront, OneLogin, and Ringly, to name a few.
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Uber Database Breach Exposed Information Of 50,000 Drivers, Company Confirms
Uber announced today that its database was breached by an unauthorized third party last year. The company confirmed the breach in a company blog post published this afternoon, authored by Uber’s managing counsel of data private Katherine Tassi.
The breach, which occurred on May 13 2014, revealed the names and license plate numbers of approximately 50,000 drivers across various states. Uber says that the number of drivers who had their information exposed during the breach represents “a small percentage of current and former driver partners” and that thus far, there have been no reports of misuse of the information that was exposed.
Uber is currently notifying the drivers.
Uber said in the post that it discovered a breach occurred in September 2014, and that it subsequently immediately changed its access protocols and began investigating. The company hasn’t specified why it waited this long to publicly disclose the breach or notify the drivers affected.
Uber says it will offer a free one-year membership of Experian’s ProtectMyID Alert, which is an identity theft protection service, to the drivers that have been affected. The company has also filed a “John Doe” lawsuit to discover the identity of the hacker.
Here’s a full transcript of Uber’s blog post:
In late 2014, we identified a one-time access of an Uber database by an unauthorized third party. A small percentage of current and former Uber driver partner names and driver’s license numbers were contained in the database. Immediately upon discovery we changed the access protocols for the database, removing the possibility of unauthorized access. We are notifying impacted drivers, but we have not received any reports of actual misuse of information as a result of this incident.
Uber takes seriously our responsibility to safeguard personal information, and we are sorry for any inconvenience this incident may cause. In addition, today we filed a lawsuit that will enable us to gather information to help identify and prosecute this unauthorized third party.
Here’s what we know:
- On September 17, 2014, we discovered that one of our databases could potentially have been accessed by a third party.
- Upon discovery we immediately changed the access protocols for the database and began an in-depth investigation.
- Our investigation revealed that a one-time unauthorized access to an Uber database by a third party had occurred on May 13, 2014.
- Our investigation determined the unauthorized access impacted approximately 50,000 drivers across multiple states, which is a small percentage of current and former Uber driver partners.
- The files that were accessed contained only the name and driver’s license number of some driver partners.
- To date, we have not received any reports of actual misuse of any information as a result of this incident, but we are notifying impacted drivers and recommend these individuals monitor their credit reports for fraudulent transactions or accounts.
- Uber will provide a free one-year membership of Experian’s® ProtectMyID® Alert. If impacted driver partners have questions or need an alternative to enrolling online, please call (877) 297-7780 and provide the Engagement number listed in the notification letter.
- We have also filed what is referred to as a “John Doe” lawsuit so that we are able to gather information that may lead to confirmation of the identity of the third party.
Featured Image: 360b/Shutterstock
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