Tag: Sustainability

A Deficit of Idealism: Tim O’Reilly on the Next Economy

By

“The obligation, and the self‑interest of every company is to build a robust society.”

Tim O’Reilly has made studying the near future his full-time job, despite the fact he’s also in charge of a major technology publishing business, a venture investment firm, and countless conferences and events, all of which bear his name. All of his endeavors spring from a relentless curiosity around what the “alpha geeks” are doing — he’s something of a technological dowser, always looking for the next spring of fresh thinking. I was honored to be Tim’s partner in the Web 2.0 Summit conference for nearly ten years, and during that time I came to not only appreciate his unique brand of thinking, but also his desire to truly push the tech industry forward.

Given that tech is now driving change across all sectors of the economy, it’s in no way surprising that over the past few years, Tim has turned his attention to a scope larger than technology itself — to government, policy, and the global economy. His Next:Economy Summit explores all these issues and more each Fall. For the third edition of the Shift Dialogs, Tim stopped by the Nasdaq studios and we riffed for nearly an hour. Below is an edited transcript of our conversation — you can watch the video, which is edited down for length, here as well.

You recently told me that technology is in a crisis of trust. Can you unpack that for me?

Read More

Contracting Diversity, The Rise of the Minimum, and Managing Humanity

By


One Way Silicon Valley Could Increase Diversity and Reduce Income Inequality
 Silicon Valley is more diverse than you might think — if you count blue-collar subcontracted workers. A report out of UC Santa Cruz (PDF) notes that people employed by subcontractors are paid 30% less than those who contract directly with tech companies. They’re also disproportionately people of color. Big tech companies use subcontractors to keep labor costs down — and to shield themselves from potential labor issues (although WeWork found that doesn’t always pan out). But given the Valley mantra of efficiency, why not cut out the middleman and go direct? These are far from elite white-collar gigs, but they are jobs that would pay better if they were contracted directly. “While 7% of high-tech direct employees are Hispanic or African-American, 26% of white collar potentially contracted workers and 58% of blue-collar potentially contracted workers are Hispanic or African-American,” the report says. That’s a more diverse group of workers available to be hired right now. As lead report author Chris Benner tells the Washington Post, “there is strong occupational segregation by race.” Many prominent tech execs talk the talk about diversity and income inequality; here’s an example of how changing a hiring strategy (from outsourcing with outside firms to contracting directly) could have an immediate positive impact on both fronts.

Rise of the Minimum
 Minimum wages are rising faster than sea levels in California, New York, and the UK. It seems a movement is afoot.

Read More

Why Solar Panels Matter, Subsidizing the Internet, and What Makes Vibrant Cities

By


Why Solar Panels Matter
People put solar panels up on the roof everyday; MIT’s Ethan Zuckerman digs deep and rethinks what’s really going on. He describes the social framework for his not-as-expensive-as-he-feared solar install, built around Lawrence Lessig’s Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. The 1999 book (updated in 2006) spells out four ways societies regulate behavior (laws, markets, norms, code), which Zuckerman uses as his map for understanding his motivations, sense of reward, and value created. Most of the attention Lessig has gotten lately has been due to his brief presidential campaign; this essay is a heartening reminder that Code lives on and is relevant even in unexpected contexts. Zuckerman writes, “It’s rare to feel like you can do something unambiguously good for the world — generating solar power is one of those rare cases, thanks in part to [Lessig’s] four levers of social change coming together.”

Subsidizing the Internet
With all the attention paid to efforts by Facebook, Google, and others to deliver free or inexpensive Internet access to developing nations, it’s easy to forget that not everyone in the First World has adequate access, either. That’s why this week the Federal Communications Commission will debate whether to extend its Lifeline program (SF Chronicle), created in 1985 to subsidize phone service for low-income Americans, to the Internet. According to the Pew Center, more than 60 million Americans don’t have Internet at home. Some subset of these people do have smartphones but, as one person interviewed in the Chronicle article points out, it ain’t easy to fill out a job application on a smartphone.

Read More

Evgeny Morozov’s Takedowns, Andy Grove’s Ideas, and Olive Garden’s Mess

By


Evgeny Morozov, Alec Ross, and the Tech-Business Takedown
Ever since there have been people who thought big ideas about tech, there have been those eager to cut down those ideas. The current master of the art is Evgeny Morozov. His recent Baffler takedown of Alec Ross goes after the former State Department official and current Silicon Valley-friendly techno-utopian for his glib pronouncements on How the Internet Is Changing Everything. Morozov’s longform dismissal of Ross bounces between ace policy dissections and ad hominem attacks. And at 5,000 words, it’s positively compact compared to his 16,000-word mugging of Tim O’Reilly a while back. Morozov’s distrust of Valley do-gooderism (“solutionism,” he calls it) is deeply felt, and it’s instructive to see how well he wields the Internet to point out weaknesses in his foes. But there’s a pattern here: The Ross takedown begins with Ross asking Morozov for advice; the O’Reilly takedown ends with O’Reilly offering to get together with Morozov to talk. In both cases, Morozov shows that he’s unwilling to listen. Just as with those he accuses, he’s got his mind made up already. Sure, some of his targets deserve the Morozov treatment. But years after he started pointing out the flaws in everyone else’s architecture of ideas, it’s still unclear what, if anything, he might want to build up.

Andy Grove’s Lasting Lessons
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the death of Silicon Valley giant Andy Grove is more than a one-day story. Ben Thompson’s most recent Exponent podcast dissects Grove’s influence as a leader (for good and bad) and Teresa Tretch’s Andy Grove’s Warning to Silicon Valley is a sharp Times op-ed that recalls an influential 2010 essay Grove published in Businessweek about creating jobs. Grove’s ideas about scaling and free markets are idiosyncratic and, at their peak, inspirational. Grove may have symbolized Silicon Valley for many, yet he often used his position not to celebrate but to question Valley orthodoxies springing up around him. In particular, he often pushed back against the assumption that the only point of profit was profit. Grove was a complicated figure; don’t let his position as a symbol of the Valley make you forget that he was able to stand apart from it, too.

Read More

Against the Sharing Economy, For Extreme Transparency, and Samsung Goes Startup

By


Against the Sharing Economy
Takedowns of the sharing economy are moving from kneejerk Luddite outbursts to detailed, data-driven analyses. Tom Slee’s What’s Yours Is Mine: Against the Sharing Economy, an excerpt of which is running in Jacobin, goes after the usual suspects (Airbnb, Uber) for the usual offense (helping themselves, not communities). Slee’s argument is based on the relative opacity of these firms’ practices. Staying private gives them “maximum flexibility” and imposes far less government-mandated transparency, thus creating a “perfect storm of bad incentives.” In particular, Slee gives examples of how the companies manipulate proprietary data as a PR tool, disseminating misleading data points and commissioning even more misleading reports, choosing which data to share with cities and drivers — and which to keep under wraps. We’re still waiting for a truly balanced look at the industry that gives weight (if not necessarily equal weight) to both its strengths and weaknesses. Until then, Slee’s evidence-heavy essay reminds us that the arguments against the sharing giants can’t be easily dismissed.

Extreme Transparency for Sale
Before putting social analytics tool ThinkUp up for sale, cofounder Anil Dash laid out terms any potential buyer must meet to qualify, including commitments to protect user data and refunds for paid subscribers if they don’t like the new owner. “We’re publicly sharing our plans for ThinkUp because we know it’s the best way to protect our users,” Dash wrote. We hope this extreme transparency and customer advocacy works; it would serve as a terrific precedent.

Read More

Because Calling It “Profiting From The Financialization of Death” Won’t Make the Phones Ring

By

Image

If you listen to sports talk radio in California, as I do, you’ve heard the ads. A firm called “Reliant” promising “10–12% returns” with “no market risk.” Sounds way too good to be true, right? That’s the range of return that Bernie Madoff promised. But, heck, who isn’t interested in great returns with no risk? So, after hearing the spots a few times, I Googled the company to learn more. No luck. Finding anything about the firm is hard — the name is so generic it’s impossible to figure out who’s really behind the scheme. And the ads have no detail on what the company actually does, just an 800 number to call. That’s a red flag — who runs expensive radio ads without an SEO strategy?!

The fifth or sixth time I heard the ads, curiosity got the better of me and I called the number (it’s 800–788–1000, FWIW. It only works when the ads are running, natch). What I learned was fascinating.

Read More

Climate Change Refugees, Everlane Opens Up, and a Silicon Valley Giant Passes

By


American Climate Refugees
It’s a terrible milestone: the first community in the U.S. to end due to climate change (Bloomberg). Isle de Jean Charles in Louisiana is sinking into the Gulf of Mexico. It’s a small, atypical community — a few dozen houses, all on stilts — but it provides an early look at how local and state governments are trying to help doomed communities, in this case by moving the whole thing somewhere else.

Why Everlane Opened Up
Everlane is an iconoclastic fashion brand (no advertising, no discounting, no seasonal collections), but it’s also important for its emphasis on “radical transparency” before that became a buzzy term. For example, Everlane breaks down the individual costs for each product: materials, hardware, labor, duties, transport, etc. In Business of Fashion, founder Michael Preysman riffs on why that approach was a differentiator. “We didn’t have this notion of ‘radical transparency’ straight out of the gate. It emerged from helping customers understand who we were and why we were doing things in a certain way. We said, ‘Hey, we’re making a t-shirt that normally sells for $50 and we’re going to sell it for $15.’ But how do you actually explain that to customers in a way they get? How do you get them to understand that it’s a really high quality t-shirt and not a t-shirt that cost us $3 to make? So, we thought we’ve got nothing to hide. Why don’t we just tell people exactly what it costs us to make?”

Read More

An SXSW Surprise, What’s Wrong With Silicon Valley, and What’s Right With Uber

By

An Austin Surprise
Marketing’s tightening grip on SXSW has been unpleasant to watch, but this year one unlikely company created an experience that delighted all comers. Find out which company NewCo founder John Battelle gives the award to for best — and most surprising — marketing execution at SXSW.

Holding a Mirror to Silicon Valley
There’s plenty wrong with Silicon Valley. Indeed, a small industry of pundits (prime current example) lives to poke holes in the Valley mentality. An essay making the rounds now, Silicon Valley’s Unchecked Arrogance, raises core questions about Valley assumptions, and has garnered more than 2,400 recommends at press time, which makes for a hit on Medium. The success of the piece reminds that there’s an audience worried about the same things. (And, frankly, they’re the sort of people who want to work at NewCos on a mission.) The essay asks how we build social fabric, ownership, and meaning into the companies and products we create. Authors Ross Baird and Lenny Mendonca don’t offer any answers, but for steps in that direction Baird has written a followup in response to (and pushing forward) a healthy debate questioning the underpinnings of Valley capitalism that’s happening on Medium now.

Matt Joseph’s Twitter Rant and Reaction
In one of his responses to “Silicon Valley’s Unchecked Arrogance,” Baird references the Valley’s lack of diversity. Matt Joseph, an entrepreneur prepping for a Y Combinator demo day, is living it. This tough-minded wide-ranging, 30-installment Twitter rant shows what it’s like on the inside if you’re black, where “we had to overcome things that others in the exact same position didn’t have to.” It’s not easy to read if you’re white, male, and live in the Valley, and some people who fit that description have waded into the conversation, leading Joseph to respond “Moments like this give me hope. Proud of the VCs and others who had the courage to look in the mirror and start convo’s in their networks.” Let’s hope it’s not a one-day thing.

Government Promotes Open Source — Or Does It?
At first, it looks like some legislators in New York State are trying to give the open source software community a chance to do well by doing good. Senate Bill S161 provides a tax credit “for taxpayer expenses associated with the development of open source and free software license programs.” Pretty good idea, right? At least it is until you discover that the maximum tax credit is $200, or less than the cost of one Microsoft Office license. As firms grapple with how to make open source pay, it’ll be fascinating to see what role government plays. One of the state senators behind the New York bill says its purpose is to encourage innovation. That’s great, but with a $200 cap, this bill seems more symbolic than real.

Read More

Tech Should Lead Beyond Tech

By


If your business focus is in technology or the Internet, as mine has been for nearly three decades, it’s quite possible you’ve never heard of the GLOBE Series, a global conference dedicated to sustainability in business. Until I was invited to participate this year, due in large part to NewCo’s core mission, I certainly hadn’t. What I saw opened my eyes and left me pondering the role of tech in the future of our planet.

The longest-running event dedicated to global environment and business, GLOBE draws more than 9,000 delegates to Vancouver from more than 50 countries around the world. There’s no shortage of government ministers, nonprofit leaders, and sustainability officers from huge companies like Nestlé, Lowe’s, and Citi. But if you peruse the speaker and sponsor lists, it’d be fair to conclude that sustainability simply isn’t a core issue for technology companies. They’re pretty much no-shows.

Read More

Social Movements Change Business, But One Thing Hasn’t Changed

By


It’s OK to have a cause. Just don’t lose sight of why your customers are your customers.

That’s part of the message Derrick Feldmann delivered to a crowd of 50 Tuesday at San Francisco NewCo Presidio Institute. As founder of The Millennial Impact Project and author of Social Movements for Good: How Companies and Causes Create Viral Change, it’s his job to talk to activists, nonprofits and businesses who do good.

Read More