Innovation Invites Hucksters

I am constantly furious about this system that seems to force start-ups to shoot for the moon, or else. WeWork had a basically smart, if not entirely original, idea to remove many of the headaches of commercial office leasing. But that wasn’t enough, and I almost don’t blame Neumann for that.

Disproportionate rewards go to the entrepreneurs and companies that can sell a vision of billions of users and values in the trillions of dollars. This is why Airbnb doesn’t merely say that it lets people rent a home in an app. The company says that Airbnb helps “people satisfy a fundamental human need for connection.” It’s why delivery companies like Uber and DoorDash are aiming to deliver any possible physical product to anyone, and companies think they have to make virtual reality become as popular as smartphones. Merely earthbound ambitions aren’t good enough.

Those conditions tempt people to skirt the edges of what’s right and legal. But I also wonder if curtailing the excesses would also curb the ambition that we want. Sometimes the zeal to imagine ridiculously grand visions of the future brings us Theranos. And sometimes it brings us Google. Are these two sides of the same coin?

Elon Musk shows both the good and the bad of what happens when technologists dream outlandishly big. Perhaps more than any single person, Musk has made it possible for automakers, governments and all of us to imagine electric cars replacing conventional ones. This is a potentially planet-transforming change.

But Musk has also endangered people’s lives by overhyping driver-assistance technology, has repeatedly over-promised technology that hasn’t panned out and has skirted both the law and human decency.

I used to half-jokingly ask a former colleague: Why can’t Musk just make cars? But maybe it’s impossible to separate the reckless carnival barker who deludes himself and others from the bold ideas that really are helping to change the world for the better.

I hate thinking this. I want to believe that technologies can succeed without aiming to reprogram all of humanity and without the associated temptations to engage in fraud or abuse. I want the good Musk without the bad. I want the wonderful and empowering elements of social media without the genocide. But I just don’t know if we can separate the wonderful from the awful.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/03/technology/innovation-invites-hucksters.html