Have a Coke and smile like a techno-optimist

In 1971, the year before I was born, Coca-Cola ran a Christmas ad filled with happy, shiny, young people singing “I’d like to teach the world to sing”. The ad, which came out during the Vietnam War, implied that the world could achieve ‘perfect harmony’ if only we just bought each other a Coke. 

It is an old and very famous ad. But it popped up in my head today as I read that Techno-Optimist Manifesto from Silicon Valley entrepreneur Marc Andreessen. Mostly because he mentions Coke when quoting Andy Warhol: [emphasis mine] “We believe Andy Warhol was right when he said: ‘What’s great about this country is America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the president drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good.’”

There have been a lot of hot takes on this manifesto, including this one from my FT colleague Jemima Kelly. I started by pulling out various quotes and lines that caused me to go “huh?”. But, both you and I don’t have all day. But, I did want to comment on it — because Mr Andreessen is an influential person and the particular way he chooses to view the world influences the running of many fintech companies and global banks’ innovation departments. Since those institutions impact how we access and manage our money — that influence should be subject to scrutiny. 

First off, my journalism senses were on high alert with this very long, at times rambling and contradictory (we’ll get to that later) manifesto. Let me edit it down to two main points:

• Growth and progress are not inherently bad and technology is a tool we can use to create a better world. (I don’t disagree with that and the sentiment is an agreeable goal.)
• Free markets are better than Soviet-style communism. (Again, I don’t disagree. But neither can all centralisation structures be equated to “Soviet-style communism”, which the Manifesto seems to imply. After all, “all Cokes are the same…” is achieved by a centralised process (and a black box recipe).)

The main problem I have with Mr Andreessen’s opinion piece is the binary nature of his argument. Any questioning of technology results in “living in mud huts, eking out a meagre survival and waiting for nature to kill us.” (Again, emphasis mine.)

“Decentralization harnesses complexity for the benefit of everyone; centralization will starve you to death.” (At least we’ll still have Cokes to drink.)

He asserts that our society has been “been subjected to a mass demoralization campaign for six decades”, not only against technology but “against life”. Some of the “enemies” he lists (yes, there is an enemies list) include “social responsibility”, “trust and safety” and “risk management”.

Imagine a bank saying that ‘trust and safety’ and ‘risk management’ were ‘enemies’? A 28-year-old former billionaire is currently on trial in New York because things like ‘trust and safety’ and ‘risk management’ were not considered priorities. 

Let’s skip over the primary school-level fascist language in title headers like “Becoming Technological Supermen” and sentences like: “Man was not meant to be farmed; man was meant to be useful, to be productive, to be proud.” (Google the slogan: “Strength through discipline, strength through community, strength through action, strength through pride.” You’re welcome.) 

I’ll even jump over this (which kills me as the daughter of a history teacher): “We believe the ultimate moral defence of markets is that they divert people who otherwise would raise armies and start religions into peacefully productive pursuits.” (Please read a history book — start with the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages.) 

The real danger of think pieces from powerful, rich men like Mr Andreessen is an inability to see how certain results of late 20th century, early 21st century neoliberal capitalism and technological advancements have led to unwelcome consequences for many communities, simply because none of those unwelcome consequences happened to him. 

Technology and progress are not inherently bad. We need good tools in order to build a future progressive society that supports the many. But it is the how and what we build with our tools that should be monitored and scrutinised. Questioning that does not make you an enemy of growth, it makes you a guardian of it. 

In Mr Andreessen’s worldview, free markets and technology have never contributed anything negative to society because the end result was always growth (and the massive growth of his own wallet). The world is just not that simple. 

Amazon — a service I use frequently — achieved its dominance on the back of an awful lot of cheap and exploited labour. The 2008 global banking crisis was caused by an awful lot of rich people playing the market with securitised loans sold to poor people who were not invited to play the game. 

However, it was this paragraph that should come under the most scrutiny: 

“Technology doesn’t care about your ethnicity, race, religion, national origin, gender, sexuality, political views, height, weight, hair or lack thereof. Technology is built by a virtual United Nations of talent from all over the world. Anyone with a positive attitude and a cheap laptop can contribute.” (I need to stop with the bolding.)

That is some next level Sheryl Sandberg, “Lean in” nonsense right there. To quote Michelle Obama: “Sometimes that ... doesn’t work.”

The fact is, technology does care about your ethnicity, etc., because technology is built by humans, and humans can be racist and we are, all of us, fallible. Ask Timnit Gebru, Rumman Chowdhury, Safiya Noble, Seeta Peña Gangadharan, and Joy Buolamwini whether technology doesn’t care about your skin colour, or what language you speak or what faith you subscribe to. 

At the end of the day, Mr Andreessen is a very rich, smart and successful man, who doesn’t like anyone else — be it an individual who doesn’t share his personal context, or centralised government entity who brings up words like ‘security’ and ‘risk’ — telling him he can’t pursue his version of growth. 

One of the greatest eras of growth in American history was in the middle of the 20th century, when the country was reaping the benefits of President Roosevelt’s New Deal, which was a centralised, government programme that put work and money into the hands of millions of Americans.  

The song 'I’d like to teach the world to sing' hit the top of the charts for both the Hilltop Singers (who sang the song in the ad) and the New Seekers, who re-recorded it in both 1971 and 1972. Singing in harmony with a bunch of other fresh-faced young people, who were not fighting in a war or marching as part of a labour strike in the early 1970s, is an image of optimism and hope. An image that is an ad, an ad whose goal was not to spread harmony, but to sell more Coke. 

At least dentists around the world know they’ll never be out of work.