Turning a extra sceptical eye on the tech titans

For years, Silicon Valley’s stars have been in a position to drum up optimistic media headlines with their visions of a future tech utopia. In 2022, a number of of them bumped into the exhausting wall of actuality.

“Make some noise for the richest man on the planet,” stated the slapstick comedian Dave Chapelle, as he welcomed Elon Musk on stage. 

The gang definitely made some noise, although it wasn’t what Chapelle was anticipating. Boos and jeers rang out between extra sparse claps and whoops, with the jeering refrain happening for practically 10 minutes.

The billionaire Tesla chief govt might need anticipated a extra rapturous welcome within the world tech hub of San Francisco.

However his picture has been tarnished after a tumultuous first few months because the proprietor of the social media platform Twitter, throughout which he botched the rollout of a brand new paid-for account verification system, laid off hundreds of staff in questionably authorized vogue, and customarily alienated lots of people through the use of his account to interact in close to fixed right-wing trolling.

He was not the one billionaire tech titan to endure a precipitous fall from grace in 2022. It was a 12 months the place a lot of Silicon Valley’s extra lofty guarantees bumped into the exhausting wall of actuality.

Mark Zuckerberg has endured a deluge of unhealthy headlines and a pointy dip in Meta’s inventory value after sinking $36 billion into a virtual reality ‘Metaverse’ that even his own employees do not use.

Sam Bankman-Fried, the so-called “good man” of crypto, was arrested earlier this week within the Bahamas over alleged fraud he dedicated within the lead-up to the collapse of his firm FTX.

Elizabeth Holmes, founding father of the bogus medical tech startup Theranos was jailed for 11 years for fraud last month.

The listing goes on.

This media negativity could be coming as one thing of a shock to Silicon Valley’s stars.

Although the quantity of sceptical protection they’ve obtained has risen through the years, a lot of them have loved a largely straightforward trip from the press and authorities regulators.

Earlier than its collapse, FTX was in a position to run ads on US national TV during the Super Bowl with out a lot as a warning.

Bankman-Fried was in a position to generate fawning media profiles for his supposed dedication to a philosophy referred to as efficient altruism, and his apparently extra wise strategy to advertising cryptocurrency.

On Thursday, The New York Submit printed his face on its entrance web page alongside the headline ‘Bushy Plotter’. 

Crypto, on the very least, has had a more durable time from the press than some tech corporations – most notably these promising transport revolutions.

In 2016, Volvo NZ’s Coby Duggan told RNZ that totally autonomous self-driving automobiles could be on the roads by 2020 or 2021.

“That does sound wonderful,” the host replied. “It’s so quickly.”

If it sounded wonderful, it was probably as a result of the thought individuals could be replying to emails and making use of their make-up in totally autonomous automobiles by now was, to place it mildly, overly formidable.

However Volvo and RNZ have been hardly outliers in taking a sunny view on driverless expertise again then.

The New Zealand Herald additionally reported in 2016 that self-driving automobiles might be on the highway by the tip of that 12 months.

Opinion author Paul Minett urged the government to delay every road and public transport investment wherever possible in anticipation of the driverless revolution. 

One other Herald columnist, Matt Heath, stated Auckland’s Metropolis Rail Hyperlink would seemingly be out of date by the point it opens as a result of by then “computer co-ordinated driverless pods” would “rule the city”.

Six years have come and gone and – pandemic delays apart – there was no signal of self-driving automobiles on our roads. 

In actual fact, they appear additional away than ever. 

Ford and Volkswagen shut down their collectively funded autonomous car startup Argo AI in October, saying the expertise was nonetheless a great distance from being brought to market.

Different flawed transit-focused tech corporations have been boosted by sympathetic or insufficiently vital media protection together with Uber, which as soon as stated it might ease congestion in cities. In actual fact the other has proved true.

However nobody has benefited greater than Musk.

His firm Tesla acquired a rush of excellent press when it joined the push for driverless automobiles. It was now arguing in court docket that its experiment ought to solely be labelled a failure rather than a fraud.

Musk additionally promised to repair what he known as “soul-destroying site visitors” by constructing a community of tunnels beneath and between cities by his startup The Boring Firm.

Transport consultants dismissed the thought as a farcical distraction, however a number of cities cancelled their very own transit plans and invested within the firm and his imaginative and prescient – solely to see it stop all communications after operating into minor regulatory obstacles or minor value overruns in accordance with reporting from The Wall Street Journal.

On an episode of the Vox podcast Today, Explained Alissa Walker from the New York web site Curbed stated The Boring Firm saga mirrors an episode of The Simpsons during which a salesman convinces the city of Springfield to fund a shoddy monorail that promptly breaks down.

And Musk’s startup Neuralink, which goals to mix brains and computer systems, was below federal investigation after killing 1500 animals in experiments.

Musk has acquired away with peddling exaggerations, half-truths and no-truths partly due to his audacity and undiluted self-belief.

Social media has expanded the reach of these kinds of confidence men, permitting them to construct cult-like followings with out having to win over a lot as a barely sceptical newspaper editor.

However figures like him have additionally gained help from gullible or ‘access-driven’ elements of the press, which have uncritically amplified their utopian guarantees and self-aggrandising mythologies.

As late as this April, revered tech journalist Kara Swisher was warning individuals to not underestimate Musk or his Twitter takeover. 

She instructed New York Magazine he was a “visionary” – however later instructed Musk in a tweet he was her “best disappointment in 25 years of masking tech”.

“Nicely, you and having to interview Jeff Bezos on a Segway as soon as,” she added.

It could have taken a semi-disastrous dip into social media to dim Musk’s lustre for some, however just a few journalists and commentators have all the time been distrustful of massive tech’s massive guarantees.

One in all them was Paris Marx, writer of Street To Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Will get Flawed About Transport.

They spoke to Mediawatch again in October, earlier than the worst of Musk’s Twitter drama, in regards to the significance of making use of a sceptical eye to any tech billionaire promising transport utopia.

“I believe we have now seen a bit extra scepticism in recent times, particularly since 2018 when the Cambridge Analytica revelations got here out round Fb,” Paris Marx instructed Mediawatch.

“For a very long time there was an actual want to purchase into what these Silicon Valley tech corporations have been promising us. Now …  it is actually incumbent on us to maintain asking these questions as corporations preserve making massive, outlandish guarantees.”

Regardless of that elevated scepticism, Marx stated reporters nonetheless purchase into tech’s narratives on matters just like the transformative potential of electrical automobiles.

A number of commentators in New Zealand have pointed to the electrification of the car fleet because the sole step needed to decarbonise the transport system.

Marx disagrees with that evaluation, given the deaths and accidents brought on by automobiles, the geometric problems they pose for city design in addition to the price of protecting one.

“I might argue the extra sustainable path is to attempt to incentivise and attempt to construct our communities in such a manner that as many individuals as doable have options to driving a automobile.

“Will we proceed on this highway the place we’re depending on automobiles – or do we provide individuals actual options?”

Marx recognises the financial constraints on the media, which might make it simpler for tech corporations’ PR departments to get their message out unfiltered.

But when they’d their manner, journalists masking tech corporations, significantly these promoting transport options, would all the time hunt down vital voices earlier than hitting publish.

They stated we owe it to those that can’t drive, together with the imaginative and prescient impaired or a lot of aged individuals, to not simply swallow the narratives coming from corporations like Uber.

“I might wish to see a better give attention to the way in which that folks get round, the problems that folks have getting across the metropolis, the individuals who cannot simply use the system that we have now to day,” they stated.

“What are the interventions that we will make that may resolve the precise issues individuals face in getting round, and infrequently it isn’t the kinds of issues that the tech corporations are proposing.”