Silicon Valley oligarchs don’t get much jerkier than Marc Andreessen, a real toolbox who has to bury beneath his arrogance perfectly reasonable people who disagree with him. You’re not simply wrong if you worry that machine learning may lead to technological unemployment–you’re a dope worthy of scorn.
Andreessen stepped into it in a big way a few days ago with a tone-deaf tweet about India, after the country embraced net neutrality and blocked a Facebook app. Instead of arguing the move would harm the developing nation and explain why, the venture capitalist sent out 140 callous characters of pro-colonialism. As if billionaires didn’t have a bad enough name already.
It’s great that the shitstorm that followed made Andreesen withdraw his comments and apologize profusely, but where there’s no sense of humility, there are likely no lasting lessons learned.
From Nellie Bowles in the Guardian:
When the news came that India had rejected Facebook, board member and investor Andreessen tweeted the missive that echoed around the world: “Anti-Colonialism has been economically catastrophic for India for decades. Why stop now?”
One sunny San Francisco day later – after Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg was forced to publicly disavow the tweet – Sharma was calling in on Arvind Gupta, who invests in and guides a group of early stage startups at his accelerator IndieBio. Their conversation quickly shifted to Free Basics and Andreessen’s message.
Gupta said he felt Facebook’s stumble was partly due to distance and being out of touch with Indian people.“It’s easy to think this is a good idea 5,000 miles away in your nice apartment,” Gupta said.
Sharma saw it as part of a broader issue of homogeneity in Silicon Valley, a region run by a narrow set of oligarchs who famously eschew hiring women or people of color.
“Why is the Valley suddenly so tone deaf? Well, look how badly the Valley does on inclusion in hiring. Bias is the norm here,” Sharma said. “Why is the Indian user any less capable than anyone else? Why do they have different needs than you do? They don’t. But that thinking is all part of the same problem.”•
