Technology And The Ruling Party

"Power tends to corrupt," said Lord Acton, "and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."

The sexism needs updating but the sentiment remains true. That's been all too obvious this week, during which the powers that be did their damnedest to protect their once-secret surveillance programs...while the NSA responded to Freedom Of Information Act requests with the claim "There's no central method to search [internal NSA emails] at this time."

@rezendi In related news, NSA says it's never come across the term "dogfooding" in any of its data trawling, & doesn't know its definition.-
Lun Esex (@LunaticSX) July 24, 2013

The black-comedy message is clear: surveillance is something that the powerful do to the powerless, in their own perfect secrecy. Two-way transparency is but a pipe dream in the minds of civil libertarians. Which puts me in mind of science-fiction guru Charles Stross's recent blog post A Bad Dream:

Is the United Kingdom a one party state? [...] I'm nursing a pet theory. Which is that there are actually four main political parties in Westminster: the Conservatives, Labour, the Liberal Democrats, and the Ruling Party. The Ruling Party is a meta-party...it always wins every election, because whichever party wins is led by members of the Ruling Party, who have more in common with each other than with the back bench dinosaurs who form the rump of their notional party [...] Any attempt at organizing a transfer of power that does not usher in a new group of Ruling Party faces risks being denounced as Terrorism.

Of course in America this is old news. The one thing that the Tea Party and the Occupy movement have in common is their desire to throw the Ruling Party bums out of Washington. It's an accepted axiom in American politics that anyone who has been in Washington too long is suspect and probably corrupt. (More than 75% of Americans think their political parties are corrupt.)

The wave of hope that drove Obama into office was fuelled in part by the belief that he wasn't a member of the Ruling Party. Well, even if he wasn't then, he sure is now. That's what usually happens to successful politicians:

The GOP establishment: Obama is a tyrant, except in the areas where we want to give him sweeping unilateral power to exercise in secret.-
Conor Friedersdorf (@conor64) July 26, 2013

Nancy Pelosi in 2005: Patriot Act "a massive invasion of privacy" 1.usa.gov/1bOHdyZ Today, she voted to let that invasion continue.-
Trevor Timm (@trevortimm) July 24, 2013

Similarly, the recent spate of antigovernment street protests in Turkey, Brazil, etc., are-arguably-protests against the various international incarnations of the Ruling Party. As Slavoj i ek writes in the London Review of Books:

What we first took as a failure fully to apply a noble principle (democratic freedom) is in fact a failure inherent in the principle itself. This realisation - that failure may be inherent in the principle we're fighting for - is a big step in a political education. Representatives of the ruling ideology roll out their entire arsenal to prevent us from reaching this radical conclusion.

i ek's a Marxist, and I'm a staunch capitalist, but even I have to admit that he may be on to something there. it's possible that multiparty democracy suffers from an inherent and fundamental flaw: the eventual installation of an entrenched, parasitical Ruling Party.

So, of course, as a techie who instinctively thinks in terms of hacking and fixing systems, I immediately find myself wondering: is there a technical fix? Can better technology save us from the Ruling Parties, or at least alleviate some of our governments' more glaring flaws? Or will technology further entrench and empower them?

These days it's hard for Silicon Valley to look at Washington with anything other than dismay trending towards horror, along with a powerful sense of "there has to be a better way." I expect that's why people have seriously called for Google to buy Detroit. I suspect that's what Larry Page had in mind, at least in part, when he mused aloud about the desirability of a mad science island untrammeled by antiquated laws and politics, where we could experiment with new and better systems:

We're changing quickly, but some of our institutions, like some laws, aren't changing with that. The laws [about technology] can't be right if it's 50 years old - that's before the Internet. Maybe more of us need to go into other areas to help them improve and understand technology.

Google is, after all, the apotheosis of the Valley; a company that muses about offering eternal youth to its employees somewhere down the road, a company that oozes scientific method. Doesn't that sound a whole lot better than the Ruling Party? Doesn't it seem like the best thing we could do is import the Google Way to Washington, and turn our government into a genuine technocracy?

Sorry. No. Silicon Valley thinks of itself as built on merit, innovation, iteration, and rational thought, and to some extent it is, but its worldview can be even more blinkered and bubble-bound than that of the Ruling Party. Technology does not solve all of the world's problems, and it's dangerous hubris to think that it might. Rational thought is a flawed tool in a world full of irrational people. And most of all, power corrupts; anyone who replaces the Ruling Party will probably eventually become a member.

But on the other hand, avoiding politics and/or pretending that it has nothing to do with us is no longer an option for the tech industry. Edward Snowden has shown us that much. We have become too important and too powerful. As I wrote here almost three years ago:

You probably don't want to read about political idiocy here, and I can't blame you. But it may be time for the tech industry to start paying much more attention to the political world, because as Wikileaks vividly illustrates, these days almost every political issue has tech aspects-and hence, down the road, tech repercussions.

Can't help but think I wasn't wrong. But that doesn't mean the tech industry should be trying to directly shape what happens in Washington and Westminster. We provide tools; we don't dig trenches. That's not what we're good at. (Witness FWD.us.) Instead we should collectively be trying to ensure that tomorrow's technologies, and tomorrow's networks, support individual authority (and privacy), rather than building centralized panopticons which increase and cement the existing hegemonies.

I realize that this all sounds simultaneously paranoid and na ve. But I believe we're nearing a crucial point at which, depending on a myriad of separate decisions ultimately made by individual people, tomorrow's technologies can-and will-either increase or diminish our individual and collective freedoms by a very significant degree. The direction we will take seems finely balanced, and could still go either way. So keep your fingers crossed, and your eyes wide open.

Postscript: I'll be in Las Vegas this week to cover the Black Hat and DefCon security conferences. I'm not entirely sure yet what kind of reportage I'll be filing, but if you're interested in occasional sardonic tweets from Sin City, follow me on Twitter.

Why You Should Never Digital Detox Alone

For the first time in years, I spent 72 hours without Internet or cell phone reception. While I didn't experience any life-altering epiphanies that some claim comes from a digital detox, I now enjoy a handful of very meaningful relationships that never would have existed, with the constant temptation for shallow interactions with dozens of peoples' avatars, thousands of miles away. I learned that when you're stuck with people, you're forced to find meaning in conversations that otherwise wouldn't have seemed more entertaining than YouTube at the time.

I don't buy the snake oil that cutting ourselves off from the net makes us better thinkers; access to the world's information has made me more informed and creative. But, the Internet can't give you friendship, nor can it help you discover ideas that people have never told anyone about.

Last week, I had the fortune of testing the "never detox alone" hypothesis at two back-to-back business conferences held in the mountains. The first, Summit Outside, was an invite-only Burning Man-like gathering of 800 young social entrepreneurs in the Utah Mountains. Completely cut off from the Internet, attendees slept in tents, could go horseback riding, dance to A-list DJ's under a full moon, or attend spirituality-themed talks.

I left Summit Outside with more friends and business ideas than I have at any other conference-some from people I'd know for years, but thought I didn't even like very much. On the flip side, CEOs and investors that normally would have avoided a tech journalist like the plague, were forced into uncomfortable conversations that unexpectedly led to great ideas.

The Internet has spoiled us; at the slightest hint of boredom or unpleasantness, we escape to the Internet. Modern life is a constant elevator pitch. Potential friends and projects that don't enjoy a good first impression get tossed out.

Indeed, Summit Series itself has built a thriving company on top of the theory that the best business relationships start out as friendships. Since 2008, Summit Series has held a pricey annual conference of socially oriented entrepreneurs. Held on a cruise ship, at a ski resort, and in a makeshift camping mountain village, the Summit conferences intermix crazy-fun activities, such as shark tagging in the Caribbean, with A-list speakers, from the likes of Richard Branson and Bill Clinton. Now, Summit has raised $40 million to purchase a mountain and build permit home in Eden, Utah for grand pursuits.

Of course, I'm fully aware that pricey, quasi-exclusive networking conferences aren't for everyone. There have been plenty of criticism of them over the years. I understand the sense of irony of rich people talking about saving the world, while they party in ostentatious digs. And, of having more bark than bite when it comes to actually making an impact on the world. The conferences appeal to wide-eyed idealists.

That said, Summit Outside taught me that the world won't come crashing down If I'm off the grid for a weekend. Like many people feeling the digital overload, I'm still planning my vacation from electronics. But, now I know I shouldn't detox alone. I'm going to convene a camping trip-at least half from people I don't know and never would have thought to hang out with. I've learned not to underestimate the power of experience and randomness.

How Social And Primary Sources Affect Online Media Brands

Editor's Note: Semil Shah is a contributor to TechCrunch. You can follow him on Twitter at @semil.

Throughout high school and college, I took a heavy dose of political science and history classes. As a result, those teachers and professors stressed the importance of investigating primary source documents and analyzing them on their own merits versus secondary sources (like textbooks, for instance), even though we were all issued textbooks, essays by subject matter experts, and a range of other interpretations. Eventually as college ended, the courses focused more on the primary source and our own interpretation of it.

Fast forward to today. At least in the world of startup technology news, which moves too fast to be captured by textbooks or print-versions of magazines, primary sources remain important, but social sources - at least for me - trump all. Of course, in early-stage, private companies, obtaining primary sources is difficult. In my world of tech news, like many, Twitter is my main source of information and how I surf the web. Specifically on Twitter, however, I do not follow any "news sources" directly. There is too much information out there. As a result, I try to follow people who've I've grown to trust who read and share articles or random blog posts.

In order for me to read something, I need a social signal to trigger and capture my attention. "Who" shares it with me matters. The "source" matters still, just not as much. And, in some cases, the source online can be propped up by a brand and hold power in its distribution. Real estate to create content online is infinite. There is no barrier to entry to create information, to build an audience, to generate page views, and to peg those against ads. Therefore, at least in my small world of online tech news, social sources reign supreme.

I'm guessing many of you reading this may feel the same way. The social signal from following a friend or trusted industry source motivates me to gain interest in a link, to read the story, or save for later. The most critical piece of information in that decision is not where the link originates from and resides, but rather who has shared this link. In a way, the tweet itself, as a unit of social currency, is more important than the source itself. One product which demonstrates the pervasiveness of this Flipboard. Yes, Flipboard has dedicated media channels for sources, but on their social feeds, the author of a piece of content is nearly greyed out so that the reader can focus on "who" shared the content with them over "who" created it.

The point of view I'm sharing obviously isn't new or earth-shattering. The idea of "social news" has even collected dust. We all know it to be true. However, I believe this has big, long-term implications for online media brands. In my college history experience, book publishers spent time aligning with universities, professors, and other beacons in that world in order to make sure their materials were picked as sources. Fast-forward to today, those kind of tactics may not be as effective. Instead, media brands are forced to think critically about the quality of their loyal, core audience, because it is those individuals who will, as social sources, share and discuss the content, information, facts and myths with their own friends and audiences. This is where real, sustainable distribution lies. For media companies online, the social source trumps the primary source - it is the realization that who shares information online is oftentimes more important than what that information is. And for many media brands, that is a fundamentally - and at times scary - new reality.

Photo Credit: Jeffrey Montes / Flickr Creative Commons

Iterations: How Founders Can Fight Through The Great Fragmentation Of Talent

Editor’s Note: Semil Shah is a contributor to TechCrunch. You can follow him on Twitter at @semil.

The #1 request I hear when talking to founders in San Francisco is: “We are hiring engineers. Know any?” We all know this is a big issue that’s only getting worse, and so do most of the investors. But, I’m now starting to hear this so often, I’m beginning to worry that all the conventional tactics simply won’t work. Early-stage startups that don’t start experimenting with new ideas to source, recruit, and close engineers and other technical hires may end up running out of money or never achieving the product traction they need to get to the next level. I don’t have data to support this, but my intuition is that technical talent is so fragmented right now, all options need to be reexamined and placed on the table.

In that spirit of investigating all available options, here are 10 tactics your startup may consider given today’s conditions. And, while we often read high-level posts about how to hire people, the on-the-ground reality is that so many early-stage companies are being funded every day that when the founders close that first round, they often turn into (near) full-time recruiters, and many of them don’t succeed at it because they either don’t understand the weight of the issue before them and/or because they aren’t willing to consider these kind of options below, some of which require a serious change in thinking:

1. Hire Remote Employees: Conventional wisdom says that your team should all be together, in person. Unfortunately, there are many great potential hires who are not located in NYC or SF and, for a host of reasons, cannot move.
2. Hire Contractors (onsite or remote): Conventional wisdom says that this can backfire and cause more work because of incongruous development, but some great people may not be in the mood to commit to something so early and may want to work on other side projects for a host of reasons.
3. Hire Qualified Candidates And Help Them Relocate: Early-stage companies don’t like to get into the game of relocation expenses, but if that’s the only thing stopping the close of a great potential hire who doesn’t live around here, it may be worth considering breaking that rule.
4. Referral Systems: I’m sure most startups do some form of this, whether through gifts or cash incentives. But, maybe they need to be more robust and creative.
5. Pay More Money and Share More Equity: If it’s that hard to land good technical talent, maybe a startup cannot afford the market price, or maybe the conventional wisdom around 15-20% option pools and current salary bands are not in line with this reality.
6. Acqui-hire Teams That Can’t Survive: The Series A Crunch is real and might be just beginning. For companies that have raised more growth capital and/or those who are making enough money to warrant reinvestment into their core business, there are lots of teams out there who can be slimmed down and gobbled up, usually for a salaried offer, some equity, and a modest bonus.
7. Open A Second Office: To get around the fear of remote and/or contract workers, there could be situations where a small group of qualified candidates reside close to each other but far away from your HQ. If this core group is open to setting up a new office and could hire more people through their own networks, it may not be a bad approach for a startup that has enough cash runway to handle it.
8. Publicize Your Infrastructure And Stack: Talented folks want to see what your company has under the hood, so one approach is to invest the time and resources into a real engineering blog and sharing what goes on behind the scenes. This kind of openness attracts others who may be like-minded and could send a strong signal about how differentiated your approach is.
9. Hire Less-Developed Candidates And Train Them: What if a founding team found raw talent and made the decision to hire these folks and train them? Without reducing the bar on quality, these teams may be able to hire folks like this and devote time and resources to developing them into full team players.
10. Everyday Improvements: It’s obvious, but any list like this would have to include options like making your office the best place to work, by spending more time on recruiting, or actually hiring an accomplished recruiter who can demonstrably earn the respect of good candidates, or organize more tech talks, or more hackathons, or more competitions. [And, continually learn from experts like Dan Portillo, who captures all of his knowledge and tricks in this great slide deck.]

Naval Ravikant tweeted a great line last year: “It’s never been easier to start a company, but it’s never been harder to build one.” This fragmentation of talent is the other side of the coin in this bubble we are in — and yes, it is a bubble, but the bubble isn’t where you may think it is. Today, the asset that is overvalued is the amount of funds and shares of equity that founders are in control of and chose to hold on to — to recruit the right people, founders now have to work extra harder or be even more creative and daring to fill in their open slots. Put another way, in order to win in today’s game, many founders are going to have to make uncomfortable decisions, especially with respect to money for salaries and equity as incentives.

I am not an expert on all of this. And, I know it’s not cool to suggest these tactics because everyone says it’s all about “team” and because you want to protect your culture and because you don’t want to manage people remotely or hire contractors or spend time training a diamond in the rough, but for many early-stage companies in a flooded market like San Francisco, the harsh truth of 2013 is that everyone and their mom has a tech startup now, and everyone and their dad has a new seed fund, and you, as a founder, are caught right in the middle, forced to make suboptimal tradeoffs between quality and speed. It’s not a pretty choice, but in order to survive or succeed in this environment, I simply don’t see another way.

A Romney win would hurt Apple very badly – Nigam Arora

“A Romney win would hurt Apple and General Motors very badly,” Nigam Arora writes for Forbes.

“Both of these companies are highly dependent on China for their growth,” Arora writes. “Romney has repeatedly stated that he will declare China a currency manipulator on his first day in office. Such a declaration would likely lead to a trade war.”

Arora writes, “Chinese consumers are nationalistic... Apple will find itself in a much worse position than General Motors. Apple will be hit with a double whammy, falling sales and falling margins... In my analysis, a trade war would result in Apple stock falling under $400.”

Read more in the full article here.

Related articles:
How Romney and/or Obama should have answered Candy Crowley's Apple assembly question – October 17, 2012
U.S presidential candidate Romney vows to get tough with China, tackle unfair Chinese trade practices – August 28, 2012
Mitt Romney: Does President Obama think Steve Jobs didn't build Apple? – July 18, 2012
Photos of Mitt Romney with his Apple iPhone and iPad at his Lake Winnipesaukee home – July 15, 2012