“Humans are distinguished from other species”, says Peter Thiel, one of Silicon Valley’s high priests, “by our ability to work miracles. We call these miracles technology.” Thiel inadvertently touches on a pervasive paradox: we see ourselves as both the miracle-makers of technology and the earthly audience, looking on in wonder. But if the miracle was once the automobile, the modern equivalent of the “great gothic cathedrals”, in Roland Barthes’s famous formulation, now it is surely the internet: conceived by unknown forces, built on the toil of a hidden workforce, and consumed more or less unthinkingly by whole populations. The internet’s supposed immateriality masks not only the huge infrastructure that sustains it, including vast, heavily polluting data centres, but also the increasingly narrow corporate interests that shape it and, in turn, us – the way we think, work and live. Algorithms are at the heart of this creative process, guiding us through internet searches and our city’s streets with a logic steeped in secrecy, filtered down from above – namely, the boardrooms of the Big Five: Amazon, Apple, Alphabet Inc. (the parent company of Google), Facebook and Microsoft, those companies that have come to dominate the digital realm. (...)
The scale of their supremacy is remarkable. Google controls more than 90 per cent of search-engine traffic in Europe, and 88 per cent in America; YouTube, also owned by Alphabet, is the largest music-streaming site in the world; Amazon takes more than half of every new US dollar spent online; Facebook, having swallowed competition like Instagram and WhatsApp, holds 77 per cent of all mobile social media traffic, and recently reached 2 billion members. With Apple and Microsoft, these are now the five largest companies in the world – hence the group moniker – with a collective net worth of $3 trillion. Together they spend more on government lobbying than the five biggest banks or the five largest oil companies. “Not since the turn of the twentieth century,” Taplin writes, “when Roosevelt took on the monopolies of Rockefeller and Morgan, has the country faced such a concentration of wealth and power.” All this, he adds wryly, on the back of an invention that was supposed to “eliminate the gatekeepers”. Not that Silicon Valley sees anything sinister in all this. As Taplin puts it, they have “a very high opinion of their place in history”. According to Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder, the company aims to be “the perfect search engine . . . like the mind of God”. Earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg even seemed to suggest that Facebook should emulate, if not replace, the Church as the bedrock on which communities are built. “Mark Zuckerberg will never be my pastor”, one reporter wrote in Christian Today.
For all their missionary zeal, Google and Facebook remain predominantly advertising companies – and their algorithms are ordered accordingly. They give their services away free, and make billions collecting data and selling it on. And like the advertising industry itself, their aims are riven with contradictions. Claims to cultivate the unique character of the individual, with increasingly personalized products, conflict with the greater goals of consumerist conformity and capturing user attention: self-expression can run free, so long as it plays out along predictable, profitable lines. Hence, for example, Facebook’s increasing move towards auto-play video on its newsfeed, and the auto-queue on YouTube that sends you to a song with more views. In terms of “innovation” these companies present themselves as radical pioneers – they move fast and break things, as the mantra goes – but in practice, this only veils the homogenizing effects of their services. The music industry is an emblematic case: when the algorithms of streaming services push us towards what is already popular, a trade where 80 per cent of the revenue derives from just 1 per cent of the product is the result.
As Taplin stresses, however, perhaps the most worrying side of Silicon Valley’s self-aggrandizing aspirations is neither the money the companies make nor even the consequences so far. It is their contempt for whatever stands in their way. Democratic processes, the state, the public, tax, a basic sense of social responsibility, all are seen as so much baggage on a holy quest to better the lot of humankind. Ayn Rand’s refrain in The Fountainhead – “Who will stop me?” – has become a guiding principle. The Big Five were members of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a shadowy organization made up of the biggest corporations dedicated to advancing the free market, until a public outcry forced them to quit. While their founders and executives deliver sermons on, say, the need for a (tax-funded) universal basic income, the companies themselves excel in avoiding tax. In 2014, Facebook’s UK offices managed to pay £4,327 in corporation tax, less than the average British worker pays; in the same year, bonuses to its UK employees reached a total of £35 million. In 2013, Google paid £20.4 million in UK tax on a revenue of £3.8 billion. Taplin also points to a tellingly popular “sea-steading” movement, which sees Silicon Valley dream of “building an artificial island in the middle of the sea, not hosted by any nation-state” for the purpose of innovation. Thiel, one of its main funders, pictures it as an “escape from politics in all its forms” (and, one imagines, tax). They recently reached an agreement with the French Polynesian government to take over a portion of its territory instead. Meanwhile Larry Page, Google’s co-founder and Alphabet’s CEO, echoes the idea that governments should “set aside a small part of the world” for them alone – the company is now looking for land to build its own city; the venture capitalist Tim Draper has suggested that Silicon Valley become its own state. Add to this these companies’ vast, self-contained campuses, and one is left with the clear sense of something like a modern monastery, cut off from society but with the weight of humanity’s hopes on its shoulders: Silicon Vatican.
The scale of their supremacy is remarkable. Google controls more than 90 per cent of search-engine traffic in Europe, and 88 per cent in America; YouTube, also owned by Alphabet, is the largest music-streaming site in the world; Amazon takes more than half of every new US dollar spent online; Facebook, having swallowed competition like Instagram and WhatsApp, holds 77 per cent of all mobile social media traffic, and recently reached 2 billion members. With Apple and Microsoft, these are now the five largest companies in the world – hence the group moniker – with a collective net worth of $3 trillion. Together they spend more on government lobbying than the five biggest banks or the five largest oil companies. “Not since the turn of the twentieth century,” Taplin writes, “when Roosevelt took on the monopolies of Rockefeller and Morgan, has the country faced such a concentration of wealth and power.” All this, he adds wryly, on the back of an invention that was supposed to “eliminate the gatekeepers”. Not that Silicon Valley sees anything sinister in all this. As Taplin puts it, they have “a very high opinion of their place in history”. According to Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder, the company aims to be “the perfect search engine . . . like the mind of God”. Earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg even seemed to suggest that Facebook should emulate, if not replace, the Church as the bedrock on which communities are built. “Mark Zuckerberg will never be my pastor”, one reporter wrote in Christian Today.For all their missionary zeal, Google and Facebook remain predominantly advertising companies – and their algorithms are ordered accordingly. They give their services away free, and make billions collecting data and selling it on. And like the advertising industry itself, their aims are riven with contradictions. Claims to cultivate the unique character of the individual, with increasingly personalized products, conflict with the greater goals of consumerist conformity and capturing user attention: self-expression can run free, so long as it plays out along predictable, profitable lines. Hence, for example, Facebook’s increasing move towards auto-play video on its newsfeed, and the auto-queue on YouTube that sends you to a song with more views. In terms of “innovation” these companies present themselves as radical pioneers – they move fast and break things, as the mantra goes – but in practice, this only veils the homogenizing effects of their services. The music industry is an emblematic case: when the algorithms of streaming services push us towards what is already popular, a trade where 80 per cent of the revenue derives from just 1 per cent of the product is the result.
As Taplin stresses, however, perhaps the most worrying side of Silicon Valley’s self-aggrandizing aspirations is neither the money the companies make nor even the consequences so far. It is their contempt for whatever stands in their way. Democratic processes, the state, the public, tax, a basic sense of social responsibility, all are seen as so much baggage on a holy quest to better the lot of humankind. Ayn Rand’s refrain in The Fountainhead – “Who will stop me?” – has become a guiding principle. The Big Five were members of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a shadowy organization made up of the biggest corporations dedicated to advancing the free market, until a public outcry forced them to quit. While their founders and executives deliver sermons on, say, the need for a (tax-funded) universal basic income, the companies themselves excel in avoiding tax. In 2014, Facebook’s UK offices managed to pay £4,327 in corporation tax, less than the average British worker pays; in the same year, bonuses to its UK employees reached a total of £35 million. In 2013, Google paid £20.4 million in UK tax on a revenue of £3.8 billion. Taplin also points to a tellingly popular “sea-steading” movement, which sees Silicon Valley dream of “building an artificial island in the middle of the sea, not hosted by any nation-state” for the purpose of innovation. Thiel, one of its main funders, pictures it as an “escape from politics in all its forms” (and, one imagines, tax). They recently reached an agreement with the French Polynesian government to take over a portion of its territory instead. Meanwhile Larry Page, Google’s co-founder and Alphabet’s CEO, echoes the idea that governments should “set aside a small part of the world” for them alone – the company is now looking for land to build its own city; the venture capitalist Tim Draper has suggested that Silicon Valley become its own state. Add to this these companies’ vast, self-contained campuses, and one is left with the clear sense of something like a modern monastery, cut off from society but with the weight of humanity’s hopes on its shoulders: Silicon Vatican.
by Samuel Earle, TLS | Read more:
Image: Google Headquarters, London © PENSON/REX/Shutterstock
