The Rise Of The Tech Villain? Ctd

When the emcee of your own awards ceremony gives you a dressing down, it’s time to take notice. Here’s John Oliver at this week’s Crunchie Awards:

You already have almost all the money in the world. Why do you need awards as well after that? It is absolutely ridiculous. You’re no longer the underdogs; it’s very important that you realize that. You’re not the scrappy people that people get behind. It used to be that people who worked in the tech industry were emotional shut-ins who you could root for. Now those days are gone. You’re pissing off an entire city – not just with what you do at work, but how you get to work.

Oliver also suggested that a modern-day Wolf of Wall Street would be set on the West Coast, with “all the money, all the opulence, and about 10 percent of the sex.” And that was inside the party; outside, protesters hosted an alternative “Crappies” ceremony, with categories such as the “tax evader award.” Bill Wasik urges the industry to take the critics seriously:

Unlike any other industry, tech relies on not merely trust but faith that a leap into the unknown will be rewarded. That’s why the recent arrogance of Silicon Valley honchos has been not just poisonous but deluded. … The entire business models of Google and Facebook are built not on a physical product or even a service but on monetizing data that users freely supply. Were either company to lose the trust and optimism of its customers, it wouldn’t just be akin to ExxonMobil failing to sell oil or Dow Chemical to sell plastic; it would be like failing to drill oil, to make plastic.

When William Gibson envisioned cyberspace as a “consensual hallucination,” he was right. Unsettle the consensus about the social web and you don’t just risk slowing its growth or depopulating it slightly. You risk ending it, as mistrust of corporate motives festers into cynicism about the entire project.

Previous Dish on the escalating image problem of Silicon Valley here.