CURMUDGUCATION: Silicon Valley and the Surveillance State
Silicon Valley and the Surveillance State
Peter Schwartz is an American futurist, innovator, author, and co-founder
of the Global Business Network, a corporate strategy firm. He's done sexy things like consult for futury
movies, including WarGames (ew), Minority Report, and Sneakers (an
under-appreciated gem). He's written an assortment of books; he also wrote
the 2004 climate change report that predicted that England would be a frozen
wasteland by, well, right now. (This Peter Schwartz should not be confused
with this Peter Schwartz, Ayn Rand-loving writer. )
Schwartz was the subject of
an interview in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle, reminding us that there's an entire sector of future-looking tech-loving
folks who think the advent of the surveillance state is pretty swell.
Schwartz
is not in Silicon Valley-- he's a Beverly Hills guy. And not everything he
says is alarming. For instance:
Every single time, with no exceptions, that I’ve gotten the future wrong,
it’s because there was an inadequate diversity of people in the room. It
was not that it couldn’t be seen; it was that we were just talking to
ourselves.
Technocrats desperately need to hear that, but the
prevailing ethos is the idea of a single visionary CEO without other voices
to hold him back. As in Zuckerberg's unwillingness to let go of control of
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