{"id":5832,"date":"2015-02-23T15:37:39","date_gmt":"2015-02-23T15:37:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/?p=5832"},"modified":"2021-01-13T10:41:42","modified_gmt":"2021-01-13T10:41:42","slug":"google-and-techs-elite-are-living-in-a-parallel-universe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/2015\/02\/23\/google-and-techs-elite-are-living-in-a-parallel-universe\/","title":{"rendered":"Google and tech\u2019s elite are living in a parallel universe"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think we have always known this to be honest. Ain’t going be no trickle down from this for sure, speaking as an almost exe-tecky type.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\n

\"PoweredThis article titled “Google and tech\u2019s elite are living in a parallel universe” was written by John Naughton, for The Observer on Sunday 22nd February 2015 00.05 UTC<\/a><\/p>\n

Someone once observed that the difference between Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher was that whereas Thatcher believed that she was always right, Blair believed not only that he was right but also that he was good<\/em>. Visitors to the big technology companies in California come away with the feeling that they have been talking to tech-savvy analogues of Blair. They are fired with a zealous conviction that they are doing great stuff for the world, and proud of the fact that they work insanely hard in the furtherance of that goal. The fact that they are richly rewarded for their dedication is, one is given to believe, incidental.<\/p>\n

The guys (and they are mostly guys) who manage these good folk are properly respectful of their high-IQ charges. Chief among them is Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, and a man who takes his responsibilities seriously. So seriously, in fact, that he co-authored a book<\/a> with his colleague Jonathan Rosenberg on the care and maintenance of these precious beings. Dr Schmidt objects to the demeaning term \u2013 \u201cknowledge workers\u201d \u2013 that economists have devised for them. Google employees, he tells us, are much, much more impressive than mere knowledge workers: they are \u201csmart creatives\u201d.<\/p>\n

In the opinion of their chairman, these wunderkinder<\/em> are very special indeed. They are \u201cnot averse to taking risks\u201d, for example. Nor are they \u201cpunished or held back when those risky initiatives fail\u201d. They are \u201cnot hemmed in by role definitions or organisational structures\u201d. And \u201cthey don\u2019t keep quiet when they disagree with something\u201d. And so on. Altogether, they are an admirable body of men and women \u2013 mostly men (70%)<\/a>, admittedly, but, hey, what\u2019s a little gender imbalance in a brave new world.<\/p>\n

Dr Schmidt\u2019s smart creatives work all the hours that God sends, and then some. They are, to use his term, \u201coverworked in a good way\u201d. The concept of work-life balance can, he thinks, \u201cbe insulting to smart, dedicated employees\u201d, for whom work is an important part of life, not something to be separated. The best corporate cultures, he thinks, \u201cinvite and enable people to be overworked in a good way, with too many interesting things to do both at work and at home\u201d.<\/p>\n

All of which no doubt makes perfect sense if you\u2019re running an outfit like Google. But it also highlights the extent to which our world is bifurcating into parallel universes<\/a>. In one \u2013 that populated by technology companies, investment banks, hedge funds and other elite institutions \u2013 people are over-stimulated, appreciated, overworked (but in a \u201cgood way\u201d, of course) and richly rewarded. Meanwhile, in the other universe, people are under-stimulated, overworked and poorly rewarded. And the gap between the two universes appears to be widening, not narrowing every time Moore\u2019s Law<\/a> ratchets up another notch in computing power.<\/p>\n

Which is why we need to make a connection between what those smart creatives in California and elsewhere are creating and what is happening in the real world. In that domain, the level of economic inequality has attained staggering proportions for reasons that Thomas Piketty set out in his celebrated book Capital in the 21st Century<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Although there have been lots of detailed arguments about Piketty\u2019s work, his central proposition \u2013 that in the absence of special circumstances such as war or redistributive taxation, the rate of return to capital exceeds the rate of return to labour \u2013 is both simple and obvious. What it means is that if your wealth involves ownership of capital assets (like company shares), then you will inexorably get richer at compound rates.<\/p>\n

One of the oddest things about the furore surrounding Piketty\u2019s book was that almost nobody talked about the role of technology in all this. Specifically, there was little discussion of the strange coincidence that the recent catastrophic rise in levels of inequality<\/a> has coincided neatly with the digital revolution.<\/p>\n

When you think about it, it\u2019s clear that this isn\u2019t just a random correlation. The digital revolution is driving inequality, not reducing it. That\u2019s because the technology has certain characteristics (zero marginal returns, network effects and technological lock-in, to name just three) which confer colossal power on corporations that have mastered the technology. In the process it confers vast wealth on those who own them.<\/p>\n

But that wealth isn\u2019t shared with the users of the platforms operated by those corporations: most of the work that generates revenues for Facebook or Google is done by unpaid workers \u2013 you and me. And folks who work in paid occupations powered by those platforms \u2013 Uber drivers<\/a>, Amazon warehouse workers, to name just two \u2013 are not sharing in the wealth it generates for their owners either. Like Google\u2019s smart creatives, these people are also overworked. But not in that \u201cgood way\u201d advocated by Dr Schmidt.<\/p>\n

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010<\/p>\n

Published via the Guardian News Feed<\/a> plugin<\/a> for WordPress.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The gap between the richly rewarded few of tech firms and banks and the rest of us is growing wider. Blame the digital revolution<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,48,121,115,119,113,114,120,281,116,112,122,78,117,118],"class_list":["post-5832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings","tag-article","tag-comment","tag-discover","tag-eric-schmidt","tag-features","tag-google","tag-internet","tag-john-naughton","tag-opinion","tag-technology","tag-the-networker","tag-the-new-review","tag-the-observer","tag-us-income-inequality","tag-us-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6NRDR-1w4","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9916,"url":"https:\/\/glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/2015\/05\/12\/an-obituary-from-the-year-2025-for-a-labour-party-that-abandoned-its-roots\/","url_meta":{"origin":5832,"position":0},"title":"An obituary from the year 2025 for a Labour party that abandoned its roots","author":"diana Stone","date":"May 12, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The party could withstand election defeats. 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