I spent my morning over coffee and this interview between the Verge’s Nilay Patel and Jill Lepore. It’s a fascinating interview. Lepore put clear language to some things I’ve been thinking about lately, particularly around the Silicon Valley-inspired version of tech industry culture.
These are very smart people, but they're not, they're not humanists. […] I think that the capacity for humanistic inquiry and humanistic reading and humanistic reasoning is not something you see in great evidence in that culture, and I think it's been really kind of bred out, in a way, of the culture of Silicon Valley.
I’ve long understood this as a pursuit of technology for the sake of technology. The tech industry’s desire to change the world is arrogance, not anything rooted in a desire for human flourishing. I’ve previously heard Kara Swisher make similar points, that there’s lack of a grounding in the humanities in Silicon Valley. It’s well-trod ground for those of us working in tech who love the liberal arts, but Lepore does build on this idea, creating a more expansive reading of tech culture. I particularly like the line she draws between this lack of humanistic approach and the idea of “first principles,” the doctrine tech company founders cite like chapter and verse of a new religious text.
That particular kind of cultural formulation was all about the disavowal of the past, right? It doesn't matter what came before. You want to start a ride service, you don't study taxis or figure out where the livery service came from. You don't look at traffic patterns, you don't study anything in the past, you just start new. You just imagine it all new and you destroy what came before. Such a rejection of the knowledge and wisdom of earlier human beings.
I’m excited to check out her new book next month: The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State. Until then, here’s the full interview embedded here for you to enjoy!