A book review

Ever wanted to read a business book with the same kind of rapid fire, punchy voice of a character from the West Wing? The Four Horseman reads much like that. If you haven’t heard of the author Scott Galloway, listen to him first before you read the book, because it kind of makes the experience more compelling. He is like the tech / business exec equivalent of an Aaron Sorkin character .. quick with the quip , unapologetic in his language and who he might offend including one of his employers , NYU

There is only a one line reference to the Four Horseman fable, but it’s worth knowing the backstory because it reveals a lot about what he thinks of those 4, being Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple. The title is an allegory for that bible story signalling the end of the world is nigh, with the coming of the generals of the devil –death, famine war and conquest . These signal the end of the world at the very end of the New Testament . Through this allegory, Galloway is painting the picture that these 4 are the overlords of our everyday life and whilst it feels a bit heavy handed comparing them to the harbingers of the apocalypse, I was starting to see his point by the end.

Cynicism or sarcasm appears on almost every page, and now and again the commentary goes deep into a topic that feels more political than anything. It's pretty clear that Galloway is devastated and scared about the unfettered freedoms that come with the concentration of power, information, wealth of the big 4 .

As a result the book is fairly un PC..he makes offensive comments about a raft of otherwise revered and lauded tech leaders, CEOs etc, but (to me!) his intent feels righteous- he is freaking out about the power of those 4, and the impact of some of their business models on the world (read US politics as one unintended consequence of the FB algorithms) . His intent feels like to hold the mirror up to the wonders of that tech world and its innovations and bring our attention to the dark side along with some pretty radical ideas sprinkled along the way on how to re -balance their power.

There are lots of BIG scary facts (his notes pages go to 100 pages +) and the numbers are gob snacking when you stop to think about them for just a minute .. 

FB has a daily relationship with 1.2bn people

Combined FB and Google control 51% of the the global mobile ad spend. Last year they accounted for 103% of all digital media revenue growth ( ie everyone else was flat or in decline )

Insta was bought for $1 bn when it had a handful of employees, ( cheap !! it has a third the users of FB, a miserly 400m but 15x the engagement )

FB paid $20bn for What's app

3.5bn searches on Google a day 

1 in 6 have never been asked of google before . Not unlike being a parent where pretty much most days my kids ask me stuff I don't know the answer to 

Alibaba ( a contender for the 5th horsemen ) makes up 63% of all China retail commerce and 54% of all packages that travel via Chinese post originate from Alibaba 

Tesla (another contender) surpassed Ford in market value last year despite selling 80k cars in 2016 vs Fords 6.7milliion

Collectively these 4 employ abut 400k people but their combined value is $2.3 TRILLION, about the same as GDP of France which has 67 million citizens.

These relativities are scary and reinforce how concentrated this wealth has become

There are metaphors aplenty and plenty of quotable quotes 

' VR will be to FB what Gallipoli was to Churchill .. ., a huge failure that shows he was very wrong but won't slow his march toward victory '

' Consumers talk a big game about social responsibility and then buy phones and little black dresses manufactured in factories where people kill themselves and pour mercury into the water ''

“..hiding behind freedom of speech and a word , FB may have committed involuntary manslaughter of the truth on an unprecedented scale '

‘Stealing is a core competence of high growth tech firms’

And he is prone to grand statements

‘Google boasts the greatest assembly of IQ in history’

‘As measured by adoption and usage, facebook is the most successful thing in the history of humankind

He challenges the hype and mythology around Siilcon Valley, and the tech companies head on, eg Google as Machiavelli , at once a seemingly innocuous search engine , but covertly working to organise the worlds information to its commercial advantage . He calls out the correlation between firm/CEO likeabilty and insularity from usual regulation or government scrutiny .

Some claims I coudn’t see his side, such as VR is hype and won’t amount to much as an industry, at least not the way FB imagined when it shelled out $2bn for Oculus Rift. My son (an avid reader of translated Korean and Japanese fiction) tells me that VR is already prevalent in fantasy fiction in those countries. Diving into a fantasy world of dragons, magic swords and princesses will just be so much cooler in a VR world.

And then our papers just yesterday reported that mental health claims at least in Australia are increasing order of magnitude. imagine if we could have VR pods at work where people could seek relief from work stress for 15 minutes by escaping to whatever fantasy world soothes them ..

A must read for anyone who is a parent of a teen starting out in the world of uni, work and those in work now is the chapter giving advice on what it takes to succeed in this new world . You might not agree with all of it but he says some harsh truths and its refreshingly direct eg follow your talents not your passion, and ‘the world is not yours for the taking, but for the trying’ ie you have to work hard to be successful at anything. The alphabet perspective on your career is clever.

It paints a bleak picture of future employment prospects but the world and future employment is not all about those 4 companies and the businesses they operate (eg People are getting fatter, sicker and living longer, so health care is one segment as yet untouched by the 4 and in need of talented people to solve those problems)

I loved reading it, if only for the say it as it is unfiltered language and personal opinions he shares. With Chapter headings like Brains brawn and blood , The Benjamin button economy , Pimp your career , it certainly captivated me for 3 days straight .

Fantastic fodder for dinner party/work cooler conversations and it will fascinating to read again in 5- 10 years and look back on his grand predictions and see which ones came true 

Highly recommended