by Lucie Greene
Silicon Valley’s public and economic strength has created cultural changes inside their companies. Talk to many staffers at any of these giants, and you hear a genuine, sometimes bordering on cultish, belief in the founders and their noble intentions, even if those intentions evolved when they went public.
Boyd, musing on the same topic, had firsthand experience of Silicon Valley’s evolving persona working at several of its leading companies. “I’ve lived through all of these buildings. They’re weirdly open and yet not, that’s how they all play out,” she says, adding that an initial public offering (IPO) is often a turning point. “Google was actually extremely porous until its IPO [in 2004], which was the breaking point for it. I was inside at the time. Larry and Sergey do something called TGIFs, Thank God It’s Fridays, where they would get up and share whatever’s relevant for the week, and also answer questions—I remember when they came onstage on the Friday before the IPO was to happen.”
Boyd recalls this was a key moment in Google’s transition from a “Don’t Be Evil” company of idealists to a closed, profit-driven corporation: “They came onstage and they’re like, ‘We need you to know that we’re not able to tell you anything in advance of stockholders anymore. We’re not allowed to, so we’re not going to be able to answer most of your questions.’ It was a really radical change because the culture was such that employees always knew what was going on. But because of how the Wall Street structures work, you’re no longer allowed to do that with a public company. That changes the dynamics, and they were very upfront about it. I remember that meeting, because they made it very clear that their hands were tied. This has been the challenge. That was when they started locking down the lunch rooms, because the company was so scared of leaks.”
They have continued, though, to host labs and support innovation in far-reaching and ambitious feats—called “moonshots”—from space travel to solving world problems. This, Boyd says, continues because it’s a key draw for talented and idealistic engineers. “They’re about talent acquisition,” says Boyd. “They’re saying ‘Hey, you’re a young computer scientist and you’re building neural nets because you love it and you dream of being able to have autonomous cars. We’re the company that you should work for.’ The moonshots aren’t about profitability at all.”
Although, she adds, founders are often attached to them: “Larry was always there for the moonshots. That’s all he cared about. He didn’t give a shit about sustaining a company, that was Eric [Schmidt’s] job . . . What Larry cares about is the most interesting, the hardest technical problems. He’s trying to pull in the interesting talent, and in order to get good talent, you need to give people dreams that they can work on.”
Technical feats are one thing, but Silicon Valley is not stopping there. Increasingly its ambition covers the unknown, and the very traditional mundane areas of our lives, from pavements to schoolrooms, with promises to reinvent both. Silicon Valley leaders are looking at governance and politics as another cable network or suburban mall to be disrupted, and building on the soft civic influence they already have, which transcends border regulations, elections, and state controls. What happens when Silicon Valley sets its sights on government?
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Government and Silicon Valley
As political scenes go, it’s picture-book. Planting gardens honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at community centers in Dallas, arm in arm with residents; sitting down with DACA Dreamers and U.S. Army veterans; manfully shaking hands with Dale Earnhardt Jr. at the Charlotte Motor Speedway in North Carolina; speaking about the importance of diversity to an audience packed with young African American students at North Carolina State University. Place a square-jawed, slacks-wearing, button-downed (with sleeves rolled up) guy in there and you’d have a cookie-cutter candidate for public office. Except this time, he’s pale, curly-haired, slightly nerdy, sporting a dark grey T-shirt with blue jeans.
Speculation continues to mount about Mark Zuckerberg’s potential presidential ambitions, which, despite explosive revelations about Russia-backed content influencing the U.S. election and Facebook links to Russian state investors, seems to continually resurface. Though whether they will cease in the face of Facebook’s data breach will be interesting to watch.
It first hit fever pitch after Zuckerberg announced his famous 2017 goal to get to know America’s real people. In the wake of the controversial presidential election, his posturing on the “tumultuous year,” ambition to “talk to people about how they’re living,” hear their personal stories, and examine how technology could “change the game so it works for everyone,” news outlets were abuzz that Zuckerberg might be planning (at least eventually) to run for office. And Facebook’s board admitted it had granted the CEO up to two years leave for public service, while still retaining control of the company, if he wishes.
Zuckerberg’s public statements continue to take on a more stately rhetoric. His 2017 Harvard commencement speech was filled with civic overtures, calling on millennials to recognize the challenges facing the world, embrace a sense of collective purpose and community, and forge ahead to solve the biggest problems facing humanity via innovation, entrepreneurialism, and bravery. He called for a “new social contract” that enables equal access to opportunity for all, through concepts like universal basic income and constant education throughout adulthood to adapt to ongoing technological changes.
“The challenge for our generation is creating a world where everyone has a sense of purpose,” he said to a crowd of rain-soaked graduates, parents, and academics at the Ivy League institution, harking back to the Space Race and invoking figures like JFK and Herbert Hoover as evidence of times when America came together to take great steps forward and build great things.
Referring to those exact challenges, Zuckerberg said: “When our parents graduated, purpose reliably came from your job, your church, your community. But today, technology and automation are eliminating many jobs. Membership in communities is declining. Many people feel disconnected and depressed, and are trying to fill a void. As I’ve traveled around, I’ve sat with children in juvenile detention and opioid addicts, who told me their lives could have turned out differently if they just had something to do . . .
“Every generation has its defining works . . . Millions of volunteers immunized children around the world against polio. Millions of more people built the Hoover Dam and other great projects.
“These projects didn’t just provide purpose for the people doing those jobs, they gave our whole country a sense of pride that we could do great things. Now it’s our turn to do great things . . .”
In many ways, Zuckerberg’s political awakening is in sync with a wider shift among millennials at large toward political engagement, as growing numbers of them reach candidate age. More are likely to follow Zuckerberg. Already, entrepreneur and talent manager Scooter Braun, thirty-six, has diversified from managing Justin Bieber to politics, reportedly considering running for California governor—his company, SB Projects, describes itself as a “diversified entertainment and media company with ventures integrating music, film, television, technology, and philanthropy.”
Historically, millennials have been defined by political apathy. They will use social media “likes” in support of causes such as marriage equality and ALS (with the Ice Bucket Challenge). They will buy ethical goods. But until recently, there has been markedly low tangible action at the polling booth. Which is ironic given the enormous economic challenges they’ve been handed due to student debt, rising costs of living, and climate change. Now, in the wake of the U.S. presidential election and Brexit, both of which saw large generational splits (the young at the losing end), they are starting to engage proactively. This could create dramatic change in the coming decade. In the 2016 presidential election, millennial and Gen X voters outnumbered boomers for the first time, according to the Pew Research Center. In the United Kingdom, Labour’s surprising 2017 gain in the share of seats was credited
mostly to younger voters. An Evening Standard poll revealed significant shifts to Labour, the left-leaning party, among thirty-five- to fifty-four-year-olds. And in general, millennials are showing a more liberal bent in their attitudes and values.
Will Zuckerberg be the one of the next presidential candidates? The last year marked a particular escalation in his political overtures, but it follows a distinctive longer-term campaign to reposition him as a likeable, well-rounded public figure.
Skim back through the Instagram posts of Mark Zuckerberg, or “Zuck” as he likes to be known in digital social circles, and you’ll notice a subtle change that goes back as far as 2014. That’s when you see the foundations being laid for strategically cultivating brand “Mark” as an approachable, smart, family man. There are pictures of dogs. And his daughter Max. Though, like a lot of Silicon Valley attempts to sync with culture, it is a touch tone-deaf and lacking in self-awareness. Zuckerberg’s attempts to round out his public persona as a fun guy include ill-advised awkward comedy skits with Bill Gates and Morgan Freeman, the voice of Facebook’s AI assistant. There was the famously misjudged live virtual reality tour of Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. The objective was to bring to life Facebook’s donation of $1.5 million to the rescue cause. That fell flat, as Zuckerberg in animated avatar form was shown exploring the very real destruction, before quickly visiting the moon and then his living room to see his dog.
Many of his “candid” social snaps are palpably effortful—the staged saccharine family shots of Zuckerberg attending a New Orleans Mardi Gras, or going on date night (how did the cameras know to shoot him and his wife, artfully silhouetted against the lights, from behind?), or the earnest picture of him and his three sisters when he announces he’s having a second baby girl. His tone-deaf or vague responses when grilled by U.S. Congress in 2018 were also a source of social media mockery.
In some ways, Zuckerberg is the model template for the next generation of politician. If previously politicians have been lawyers and bankers in suits and power ties, then the thirty-two-year-old, Chinese-speaking, sneaker-wearing Mark Zuckerberg—technology magnate, philanthropist, globalist, and icon of social media—is the embodiment of millennial values.
The idea of Zuckerberg as politician raises some uncomfortable questions. If the election and Brexit were lessons in the raw power of social media to shape political discourse (and the outcome of elections), what if the mountains of data Facebook has collected were used with strategic intent? The most startling example of this is still unfolding in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which showed the myriad ways in which Facebook content could be tailored to push highly personalized hot-button subjects and potentially sway perception and sentiment with regards to elections. The full extent to which Russian-backed Facebook pages and posts impacted the U.S. election is still unknown, but the impact of fake news, social media avatars and bots, and their ability to shape and distort the digital sphere are increasingly apparent. Not least following Robert Mueller’s indictment of four former Trump advisers, thirteen Russian nationals, three Russian companies, one California man, one London-based lawyer, and counting. Social media avatars, posts, groups, and stolen identities across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube were identified as key tools in exacerbating divides among Americans. Facebook came out particularly prominently, mentioned thirty-five times in the thirty-seven-page indictment. Facebook has been publicly positive about the indictment and welcoming to its findings, save for a rogue Twitter tirade by VP of Ads Rob Goldman that appeared to repudiate the work of Robert Mueller; this stance was quickly rebuked by the company. What’s clear from the indictments is that Russia-backed ads are just a fraction of the tools used within Facebook to effect change and distortion. According to a Wired report, roughly 11 million people saw Russian ads, compared to 150 million who saw content by Russia-controlled posts. A multi-pronged, targeted, immersive social media experience to effect change. This was, of course, beyond Facebook’s knowledge at the time. But imagine if that were wielded cynically.
Mark Zuckerberg, in this scenario, could be a kingmaker. Could he make himself king?
At the moment, his image outside Facebook is harder to control, as exemplified in the widespread criticism of his leadership following Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica breach. Zuckerberg’s stilted TV interviews, and continued nonsensical referrals to Facebook as a “community,” like the social network is some kind of church hall, displayed a stunning lack of self-awareness. As did COO Sheryl Sandberg’s theatrically earnest tropes about trust in the same week. But tellingly, it didn’t matter. Both were near unilaterally unchallenged by interviewers in staged, heavily managed engagements (with the exception of Recode’s interview by Kara Swisher and Kurt Wagner). No interviews were given to the British media outlets Channel 4, The Guardian, or Observer, which broke the story, and would therefore likely have given Zuckerberg a bumpier ride. Channel 4 news anchor Jon Snow even published an open letter calling for Facebook to respond. But what happens once Facebook is the media? The game could completely change.
Subtle manipulation isn’t only possible on Facebook. And it could become even more pervasive as new consumer technologies such as facial recognition, voice activation, and interactive home hubs become the norm. At J. Walter Thompson (JWT), the Internet of Eyes and Ears was one of our biggest consumer tech trends for 2018. The trend explored how new consumer technologies are able to listen to us, and watch us, and then respond rapidly, at a remarkable rate. Everyday objects are outfitted with smart cameras and the latest in visual recognition technology, then combined with machine learning to analyze images, emotions, and facial expressions—and identify people (and even pets). Meanwhile, developments in speech recognition and natural language processing (NLP) now allow people to talk to computers in a way that might recently have seemed like a sci-fi movie. The technology helps people to activate products with their voice, converse with virtual butlers, and ask for information they might otherwise have typed into a Google search. Fifty percent of mobile internet searches are now being done verbally, according to industry analyst Gartner. Twenty-two million Amazon Echos were sold in 2017. The combination of these new technologies gives new, intimate layers of insight into people’s lives that could easily have political application.
Facial recognition is moving beyond the passport gate to be a form of financial ID. In China, in 2018, users visiting KFC branches just have to smile to pay for their chicken, with Alibaba’s Smile-to-Pay app. The iPhone X debuted Apple’s facial recognition system for unlocking the phone. Google-owned Nest has the $299 Nest Cam IQ with built-in facial recognition technology to differentiate between family members and strangers.
“The Internet of Eyes enables all inanimate objects to see by leveraging computer vision analysis,” Evan Nisselson, general partner at visual technology venture fund LDV Capital, told us recently at JWT. “Inanimate objects with cameras enable companies to own the first step in gathering the data for computer vision and artificial-intelligence algorithms to analyze. Analysis may include object recognition, sentiment analysis, gesture recognition, and many more human actions which will impact all business sectors and humanity.” LDV Capital predicts at least 220 percent more embedded cameras in the next five years.
Pretty soon, if Amazon Echo (and its ilk from Google Assistant to Apple’s Siri) is the ear to our homes, Big Tech companies will be able to analyze our reading habits, conversations, and political discourse—a new layer in what has been screen-led interactions. Already Amazon is a shopping search engine that 89 percent of millennials visit when shopping for any item online, according to JWT data. Amazon’s new AI-powered photo recognition shopping aid Amazon Echo Look is a cognitive consumer census on steroids—it will snap photos of customers, crowd-source opinions on their outfits, keep and analyze visual content, and make tailored recommendations. Could the information gathered by these applications go beyond consumerism and encroach upon our civic en
gagement to eventually shape an electoral campaign? Could Thanksgiving dining-table political conversations be used to create even more hyper-tailored and targeted advertising and messaging? Could photo recognition on connected TVs read emotional sentiment during political advertising? It’s not that much of a step—assuming it’s not happening already.
Consumers, and in particular young people, seem to look favorably on the concept of Silicon Valley as political leaders. In a poll conducted by J. Walter Thompson in 2017 for this book, 84 percent of American consumers stated they would vote for a Silicon Valley leader in a government position ranging from city mayor to president. Democrats (91 percent), city dwellers (89 percent), and minorities (Black/African American: 89 percent, Hispanic: 89 percent) were more likely than average to vote tech figures into government positions. Younger respondents, unsurprisingly, would also be more likely to vote tech leaders into governmental positions: 90 percent of those age fifteen to twenty, 88 percent of twenty-one- to thiry-four-year-olds, 85 percent of thirty-five- to fifty-four-year-olds, and 79 percent of over-fifty-fives. That means 88 percent of millennials would vote someone from Silicon Valley into public office.
Even if Zuckerberg does not try to make himself president, Facebook could be a powerful force in defining a successful candidate and affecting the outcome of an election. Consider the combination of swaths of personal data with artificial intelligence in learning and preempting people’s emotions. Or even the scope in creating (as Google, Twitter, and Facebook do) millions of personalized, targeted experiences. Designing a unique candidate who suited everybody in their individual digital setting is not too far in the distance. Netflix’s homepage is already personalized, after all. It’s interesting to consider this leaping off the page, too, as future Facebook technology moves into 3-D avatars, augmented reality, virtual reality, and beyond. If Hillary Clinton was criticized for not being in key states, Zuckerberg might soon be able to appear, virtually, everywhere. All of this goes hand-in-hand with the greater role that digital platforms, social media, and technology play in politics and elections in general.