Teen App Makers, Smart Phones, and Social Class

Mike Cassidy
(photo: Google Plus)

An article by Mercury News business columnist Mike Cassidy in today's siliconvalley.com explores what's going on for some teenaged app creators. The story's theme is that teens now consider smart phones as the ne plus ultra platform for their inventions. App development also provides access into basic programming, the knowledge of which tech's high priests have insisted is among the world's essential ambitions. Recently, according to a KQED story, some Northern California elementary schools offer class time for learning basic programming language. (No comment was added about helping this new generation become articulate in the English language.)

Teen app developers theoretically can come from all walks of life. In order to create apps, they do need access to a reasonably current computer and, of course, a smart phone. Those criteria immediately separate the haves from the have-nots. Teens from poor or rural backgrounds are far less likely to have this equipment than their suburban or prosperous urban peers. Kids from city neighborhoods without supermarkets (a useful definition of "ghetto") might have a smart phone. A computer? Maybe not.

Further, teens from areas such as tech-savvy Milpitas (the town mentioned in Cassidy's article) have far greater opportunity to connect with live human beings associated with the tech biz. While the proposition of online peer learning is a slam dunk concept for app development, the process is far more efficient when people interact in such quaint ways as face-to-face meetings.

The one depressing note in Cassidy's piece is a Milpitas high school teacher's observation about what teens find inspiring. "You could say for them that the movie 'The Social Network' was for them what 'Easy Rider' was for an earlier generation...It was just like a way to live." For teens who dream of emulating Mark Zuckerberg's college drop-out career path, beware of what you wish for. The "Facebook movie" depicts a world where emasculated privacy, a disdain for ethics, ruthless financial gatekeepers, corrupt elitism, and a boy's club atmosphere are considered generators of the greatest possible good for individuals and for society.

The Social Network skewers those who celebrate these presumably undesirable qualities. However, teens are supposedly enamored of the "empowerment" tech's young zillionaires embody. We've come a long way -- and not a useful or good way -- from Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson, and Dennis Hopper rebelling against a fucked up society.

Silicon Valley's Startup Culture Vs. Employment Law

Silicon Valley's entrepreneurial spirit embraces a free-wheeling startup culture. Few rules animate these typically small firms, whose key employees essentially disdain boundaries and imagine social laws apply only to others. This atmosphere and belief system occasionally creates legal and moral issues for the enterprise founders, principal investors, management, and yes, the "staff."

Keith Rabois
(photo: NY Daily News)

A case in point is the recent resignation of Square's Chief Operating Officer Keith Rabois. According to a Reuters story picked up by siliconvaley.com, the COO said auf weidersehen due to a legal contretemps involving an employee with whom Rabois had canoodled for two years. The story suggested that startups and their key assets could essentially do, say, or suggest anything to anybody on the staff at any time. It was as open and as vulgar as a frat house on a drinking binge, or as dangerous as a physical game of "truth or dare."

The story didn't really pinpoint Silicon Valley's all-male executive suites as a cause of these behaviors. Yet, it's hardly a secret that the tech world is the boy's club, filled with young guns who've made money too easily and too quickly. They sometimes come from environments where privilege quickly translates into repellent actions taken without consideration for their consequences. The movie The Social Network, spotlighting the actions of Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, shows Harvard's arrogant, implicit encouragement of entitlement. In that respect, Silicon Valley companies aren't greatly different than that Athens on the Charles.

What's most off-putting is the current American idealization of Silicon Valley's lack of ethos, I suppose.  "Creativity," "innovation," and "progress" apparently make objectionable behavior by very intelligent, ambitious under-25-year-old men acceptable. Behind this sleazy facade is not sexual drive as much as a drive for power and status. These young 'uns, intoxicated with their uninhibited use of control, become behavioral monsters or tricksters, such as the Sean Parker character Justin Timberlake so convincingly portrayed in The Social Network.

The Reuters piece mentions other activities, such as whitewater rafting, that had to be curtailed once a startup approached a significant financial scale and staff size. There was a sense of melancholy as small enterprise owners realized those "exciting" team-building activities were fraught with legal peril. The owners also realize employees might prefer getting paid via a lawsuit than through a problematic IPO. That is also the time when Silicon Valley's libertarian zillionaires discover they live in a land of laws, and not in a self-created nation of one-man rule.

Zuckerberg to Host Chris Christie Mixer in Palo Alto

Mark Zuckerberg
(photo: forbes.com)

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg will host a campaign fundraiser for New Jersey governor Chris Christie next month, according to a report in siliconvalley.com. The handshake-and-handout fest will continue Mr. Facebook's puzzling connection to the Garden State and its politics. Zuckerberg initially linked to New Jersey around the time the movie The Social Network flashed across American movie screens. As you may recall, Zuckerberg offered many millions to "help" the cause of "school reform" in Newark. If you are asking for evidence of the "school reform," you're not alone. Few have seen any changes in the Newark schools that warrant the donation and subsequent secrecy surrounding its use. Newark mayor and liberal media darling Cory Booker have worked overtime to squash inquiries about the funds and their utilization. It took a successful ACLU lawsuit on behalf of a Newark community organization to compel the Booker administration to release e-mail about the funds, Booker's role in their distribution, and the mayor's plans to "reform" the school system.

Sheryl Sandberg
(photo: theatlantic.com)

Meanwhile, conservative media darling Christie (well, he was beloved by the right-wing until the governor experienced his St. Paul at Damascus moment during Hurricane Sandy) is working to position himself as presidential material. Why Christie believes Silicon Valley is a more appropriate venue to test the DC waters than, say, Seaside Heights, is a fascinating question. On the other hand, what's curious about Zuckerberg's tango with the New Jersey GOP's capo is the visible political connections the company has with the Democratic Party via Facebook's resident brain, Sheryl Sandberg.

My gut tells me Christie doesn't have a chance in the presidential sweepstakes. I don't think he'll survive the primaries. VP? Maybe, but only if the top of the ticket says "Bush."

Harvard and "The Social Network"

The initial critical focus about The Social Network involved the film's portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg. The unflattering portrait of Facebook's supreme being, masterfully performed by Jesse Eisenberg, certainly merited the attention.

However, The Social Network's script allowed for sentiment, even compassion, to elbow its way into the picture. No such quarter was given to Harvard University. The school is depicted as an extraordinarily unpleasant arena, in which ego, ambition, wealth, and social status collide rather than mesh. No Harvard student, faculty member, administrator, or alum comes across as even remotely decent. The caustic sketch of former Harvard president (and Obama advisor) Lawrence Summers is especially damning. The school's unsparing atmosphere is positively unnerving. Why would a parent encourage their daughter or son to immerse her or himself in such a troubled institution?

This portrait of America's "best and brightest" is very disturbing, far more so than Zuckerberg callously promoting his algorithmically-based nightmare. Harvard's role in incubating its talent and shaping its pupils in its code of behavior appears malignant rather than salubrious. If this is the best our country can do, then heaven help us all.

The image is a still from plume, a 2006 work by Tessa Johung. The work appeared in Frame by Frame: Animation at Harvard, a show held at the Carpenter Center for the Arts at Harvard University.

Facebook Comes to Newark -- Part One

By now, Mark Zuckerberg's $100 million pledge of Facebook stock to Newark, New Jersey's school system has reached all corners of the world. We didn't even need a Facebook announcement to find out; instead, the mainstream media did all the work to publicize the gesture.

Let's look at a few issues and coincidences in this story:

1. Zuckerberg has no known connection to Newark. Why would he commit such a vast sum to a city to which he has no organic relationship? It's not even known if he has ever visited the financially broke city, 25% of whose real estate is tax-exempt. The story currently being peddled is that Newark mayor Cory Booker and Zuckerberg met this July. Booker supposedly swayed the Facebook emperor with tales of desperation and reform. Thus, in less than 90 days, Zuckerberg was willing to publicly commit up to $100 million to the schools in Booker's city.

2. The movie The Social Network is scheduled for an October 1st domestic release. Advance reviews range from positive to rave. Lots of Oscar talk will quickly emerge around the movie. One reviewer (Todd McCarthy, whom I respect) suggested the movie had overtones of Citizen Kane. Oy, vey. The bad news for Zuckerberg is that the movie portrays him as an asshole and possibly a white-collar thief. Audiences around the world will learn what an unpleasant young man Mr. Zuckerberg is. It's conceivable that the movie-going universe is larger than Facebook's current subscriber list.

3. Facebook delayed its long-rumored IPO this year. One wonders if the movie might have had an impact on that decision.

4. Forbes recently added Zuckerberg to its list of insanely wealthy luminaries. It just won't do, in a land where perception matters so much more than fact, that Zuckerberg will have reached the heights of prosperity in dramatically, cinematically graphic, unpleasant ways. How many parents would want him marrying their daughter? Hmmm...time for a social face lift.

5. However tarnished Zuckerberg's motives regarding the $100 million wager on Newark's schools, they're practically simon pure compared to the other players in this story. They include, so far, Oprah Winfrey, Arne Duncan, Barack Obama, Chris Christie, Cory Booker, and Michelle Rhee. For the moment, we'll exclude this group's principal enablers: NBC and The New York Times.

To be continued....