Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum (2016) (opens in new tab)

We've totally altered our information environment in something like 30 years. Less than an average lifespan. On the back of that anyone remotely competent and well wishing in technology was immediately supplanted by those who worship venal money-grubbing.

I went in ready to laugh at this article because it's The New Yorker casting stones about empathy vacuum, but it was actually good. Dunno if I buy the connection to Donald Trump's 2016 win, but it's refreshing to hear this explanation instead of stuff like "Facebook helped him win," the author was really empathetic.

It always bugs me when “Silicon Valley” is written about as some kind of monolith.

Do all the sincere, hard-working, risk-taking startups deserve to be painted by the same brush as Facebook?

Title should be Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum (2016), at the time:

flagged (85 points, 136 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13055427

(49 points, 16 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13057589

> the distinct lack of empathy for those whose lives are disturbed by its technological wizardry. Two years ago, on my blog, I wrote, “It is important for us to talk about the societal impact of what Google is doing or what Facebook can do with all the data. If it can influence emotions (for increased engagements), can it compromise the political process?”

He means his life is disrupted. He doesn't like Google / Meta's influence on emotions / politics, not because he has a problem with that in general, but because journalists like him view it as their god given right. And by "compromise the political process" he means the tech industry does the exact thing he built his career doing. But he is right about one thing. I don't have a shred of empathy for the journalists.

> Globalization is a proxy for technology-powered capitalism, which tends to reward fewer and fewer members of society.

This is just false. The growth of income inequality does not diminish the clear global trend of increased median income and consumption.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-income?tab=l...