How considerably do the concepts of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk form right now’s digital economic system? A research by an financial sociologist on the College of Basel has analyzed speeches, e book contributions and articles from Silicon Valley from Silicon Valley, demonstrating the emergence of a brand new spirit of digital capitalism.
What justification is there for incomes some huge cash? Nineteenth-century Calvinists interpreted financial prosperity as an indication that one was counted amongst God’s chosen. This way of considering, centered in Geneva, influenced liberal capitalism.
Immediately’s justifications for financial exercise sound totally different. They deal with themes of flexibility or effectivity. Specifically digital capitalists declare that they enhance the world. Their credo: for each societal drawback, from local weather change to inequity, there’s a technical resolution that additionally affords the chance to make loads of revenue. This method is called solutionism.
Financial sociologist Oliver Nachtwey of the College of Basel, Switzerland, collectively together with his colleague Timo Seidl from the College of Vienna, Austria, wished to learn the way influential this concept is right now. For his or her research, they drew on quite a lot of texts from Silicon Valley, the worldwide middle for prime expertise on the US West Coast. Their outcomes seem within the journal Idea, Tradition & Society.
From the West Coast to the East Coast
With the assistance of a machine-learning algorithm, the researchers examined the speeches and e book contributions of individuals like Fb founder Mark Zuckerberg and Tesla CEO Elon Musk – i.e., the West Coast tech elites. In addition they checked out articles from Wired, the journal widespread amongst tech builders and programmers. The third supply Nachtwey and Seidl examined was articles from the East Coast journal Harvard Enterprise Evaluate, which tends to be learn extra by US managers slightly than Silicon Valley varieties.
Nachtwey explains the selection of textual sources on this manner: “We assumed that tech entrepreneurs like Zuckerberg would use solutionist arguments. However we wished to know whether or not the ideology extends past the unique circle of Silicon Valley elites.”
For the research, a number of individuals first categorized independently chosen textual content excerpts with a deal with the justifications listed within the numerous paragraphs for financial exercise: world enchancment, flexibility, effectivity, and so on. Subsequent, an algorithm calculated the proportion of the assorted justifications in additional than 1.7 million excerpts.
Solutionism is rampant
For the tech elites on the US West Coast, solutionism was certainly revealed as probably the most important entrepreneurial level of reference. The thought has additionally turn into more and more prevalent in Wired, which represents the kind of the mindsets wider tech milieu within the Silicon Valley. The Harvard Enterprise Evaluate, alternatively, contained solely fleeting traces of the ideology. Do-gooder fever has evidently not but reached all corners of the US economic system. With rising digitalization, although, it can proceed to unfold to different areas and areas of financial exercise, in line with Nachtwey.
He sums up the research as follows: “We had been the primary to reveal on a broad foundation of knowledge {that a} new pressure of thought is arising in right now’s digital capitalism that gives a central justification for entrepreneurial exercise. And this pressure is very influenced by solutionism.”
Not actual do-gooders
Nachtwey considers this new capitalist spirit problematic as a result of it undervalues democratic processes. The massive “man of motion” Musk, for instance, has no appreciation for employee protections or democratic regulation. The result’s that Tesla factories in Germany have much more occupational accidents than comparable Audi factories.
Nachtwey additionally criticizes Meta, previously referred to as Fb: it claims to carry the world collectively, however permits faux information to proliferate. “Solutionism doesn’t fight actual issues in any respect; it’s simply an empty ideological shell,” he concludes. Nachtwey understands his research as a critique of the American tech giants’ self-portrayals, “which we must always regard with quite a lot of skepticism.”
Reference: “The Solutionist Ethic and the Spirit of Digital Capitalism” by Oliver Nachtwey and Timo Seidl, 23 October 2023, Idea, Tradition & Society.
DOI: 10.1177/02632764231196829