Revisiting What Happened to Silicon Values
A decade ago, I wrote an article for The Atlantic titled What Happened to Silicon Values?My concern at the time was that the values Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard instilled in the technology business environment had deteriorated.?
In the past decade, things have gotten significantly worse.?We are now willing to sacrifice the customer in the pursuit of profit.
In the 1960s, the Valley companies served mostly industrial customers.?The companies focused on delivering advanced technology of great value, then servicing and supporting the customers to make sure they derived value from what they bought.
Customers trusted Hewlett-Packard, even their salesmen. I remember one customer who so trusted the HP salesman who took care of his account so much that he let the salesman submit purchasing orders to his purchasing department to buy the HP instruments he needed. The HP salesman told me his secret to building that trust: He never bought anything for the customer that the customer did not really need.
My concern at the time was that when you compared the values of Mark Pincus of Zynga and other business executives to the values of the founders of Hewlett-Packard and Intel that there had been a paradigm shift. Rather than focusing on taking care of the customer as a way of building their business, they were focused on the pursuit of wealth in a winner-take-all environment. The success of their customers was significantly less important to them.
In the decade since I wrote the article, Silicon Values have been in precipitous decline.?The aggressive pursuit of wealth in a winner take all environment has created a new and insidious business model. Companies, especially the ubiquitous social networks and entertainment sites program their customers using psychologically addictive techniques to keep them engaged for hours in order to earn profits.
The techniques they use are basically the same ones the Las Vegas gambling casinos use to keep customers engaged for hours pulling the arms on slot machines.?Of course, the slot machines have been replaced by the keypads on intelligent devices.?
In 2000, the average person was spending 9.4 hours per week interacting with intelligent devices. Some estimates today put that number at 30 hours. What is remarkable is that today more than half of the average American’s non-physically-related activities have already been committed to virtual space.?It is easy to envision Americans spending 75 percent of their time in the future entertaining themselves on the internet.
This is having serious consequences.?One poll found Americans are the unhappiest they have been in 50 years.[i]?Much of the distress is a result of the covid pandemic.?So much of the focus has been on covid that we have not paid adequate attention to the effects of virtual space on unhappiness.?
Since 2000, the number of individuals suffering from mental health issues has been on the rise.?Depression increased significantly in the U.S. from 6.6% in 2005 to 7.3% in 2015. The rise was most rapid among those ages 12 to 17, reaching 12.7% in 2015.[ii] Suicide rates increased 33% and were responsible for more than 47,500 deaths in 2019.[iii] Anxiety increased from 5.12% in 2008 to 6.68% in 2018 among adult Americans.[iv]?Currently, nearly one in five adults in the U. S., (51.5 million in 2019) suffer from mental illness that can range in impact from no impairment to mild, moderate, or severe. Alarmingly, 5.2% of the population exhibits the symptoms of severe impairment.[v]
The big social change that occurred during this time was the rise of the internet, so it is highly likely that the time spent in virtual space played a significant role in these trends.
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Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard would take a very dim view of today’s Silicon Values.?They started with the goal of delivering great value and service to customers.?By 2012, with the arrival of social networks, business leaders converged on a business model that was based on sacrificing the customer’s mental health in the aggressive pursuit of wealth in a winner take all environment.
This is the alarming history of Silicon Values.?
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[i] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/americans-are-unhappiest-they-ve-been-50-years-poll-finds-n1231153
[ii] https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news/depression-rise-us-especially-among-young-teens
Catalyzer | Advisor to Deep Tech Innovators | IAM Strategy 300
1 年William Davidow, thanks for this insightful reality check. To add to your useful stats, re Silicon Values' impact on mental health, kindly consider the impact on a key set of stakeholders -- the mental health pros (e.g., from case workers to Medical Doctors) operating in silent crisis as evidenced by being overworked, underpaid, and rapidly vacating mental health services in local communities. [vi] [vii] As new Silicon Values worsened since 2012, what can we expect next from the power stakeholders, the winner-take-all set? Having turned the table where "the customer" is now "the product", do we get beyond pure self interest to rekindle the "common good" of the founding Silicon Values in time to seriously address the rapidly deteriorating mental health support services? [viii] (e.g., a "whole product" with real accountability for "winners" and aligned with mental health pros.) ... That could be a Silicon Victory! [vi] https://www.siliconvalleycf.org/about/news-media/blog/mental-health-crisis-nonprofits-respond-to-high-demand-for-services [vii] https://sanjosespotlight.com/what-to-expect-from-santa-clara-county-leaders-address/ [viii] https://mindmatters.ai/2020/10/the-social-dilemma-youre-not-the-customer-youre-the-product/
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1 年Amen! I started my career w/ HP in the latter Bill & Dave days. The culture and ethics that were common amongst tech companies from those days is long gone. Unfortunate…