Geek Heresy (35 page)

Another way the developed world could be a model is through a more evolved set of aspirations. Imagine if greatness were rated not in terms of firepower or GDP but in terms of wisdom and intrinsic growth. We do this sometimes already. On issues such as gender equality, many developed countries are admirable, if still imperfect. Additional intrinsic growth would mean less material consumption and more involvement with self-transcendent ends. Other countries would likely follow.

Seeking our own growth also takes the edge off paternalism. Humility is required in social causes, as privileged-world dogmas often cause damage. We should dispense with arrogant notions that we’ve reached some End of History.
¹⁵
Today’s rich societies are, at best, adolescents with still a long way to go before they reach maturity. When everyone’s intrinsic growth is a common goal, relationships become closer to true partnerships.

When Do We Intend to Start?

Isaac Asimov was tired of dark robot stories. Tales involving what he called the “Frankenstein syndrome” always had humanity destroyed by its own creations. So his novels mapped out an optimistic future where human beings prospered throughout the galaxy, often with the help of advanced technology.

Runaround
, published in 1942, when Asimov was just twenty-two, is one example. It features a robot named Speedy who spends hours running in circles on Mercury, spouting nursery rhymes in an apparent
malfunction. A human crew had dispatched Speedy after a fuel source, but the destination was contaminated with corrosive gas. Speedy thus keeps a fixed distance. It is the point of balance in Speedy’s hardwired struggle between two conflicting commands: to retrieve fuel and to preserve itself. Realizing this, one of the crew hits on an idea. He opens up his spacesuit, letting in Mercury’s harsh elements. Seeing the astronaut in danger causes Speedy to rush to the rescue, as his two competing orders are countermanded by a higher-priority imperative. Burnt into every robot brain in Asimov’s universe is a rule that precedes all other commands, the First Law of Robotics: “A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”
¹⁶

Speedy was an early model, but with it we already see the theme of technology-as-savior that permeates Asimov’s stories. As Asimov grew up, so did his robots, but the savior complex remained. Each new story described a more sophisticated model, until many of the novels featured a godlike robot named R. Daneel Olivaw. Through self-repair, Daneel becomes immortal; and through future science, he learns extrasensory mind-control. Yet the First Law never leaves him. In the multimillennial arc of Asimov’s imagination, Daneel repeatedly rescues humanity from itself as it blunders toward an enduring galactic civilization.

There is a bit of Asimov in all of us. We want to believe that our technology, the fruit of our self-actualizing ingenuity, will save us from our own vices. The belief is both an acknowledgment that we need saving and a wish to be saved. Yet in clinging to this belief, we are renouncing our potential and our responsibility to save ourselves.

The flaw is not in either technology or technocracy, per se, but in our misguided, overly optimistic beliefs about what kinds of social change they will accomplish. It hasn’t yet been a century since Asimov imagined his first fictional robots, but robots are already current news: Google has prototyped a self-driving car; software bots manipulate online product ratings; Amazon proposes delivery by automated quad-copter. These robots are designed for profit, not human betterment. Technology doesn’t bootstrap an ethical outlook on its own. Ultimately,
people govern technology. Any progress worthy of the name requires progress in human heart, mind, and will.

In spite of his optimism, Asimov – who served in the military during World War II and lived through the height of the Cold War – knew intimately that powerful technologies don’t trump Stone Age emotions.
¹⁷
He worried that critics would see through his robot paternalism and pan him for painting human beings as a species in need of chaperoning. To this imagined criticism, he replied, “If we demand to be treated as adults, shouldn’t we act like adults? And when do we intend to start?”
¹⁸

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Like the ship of Theseus, the first draft of this book was replaced piece by piece, to the point that the final manuscript contains little of the initial text. I resisted many of the revisions, but looking back, I see how necessary they were, and for that I owe thanks to the many people who provided me with opportunity, advice, and critique.

AnnaLee Saxenian at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, and Henry Tirri of Nokia Research gave me the priceless gift of one year’s time and freedom to research and write the first draft. Its essence and argument have been preserved despite successive revisions.

Scott Stossel, magazine editor of
The Atlantic
, was generous to a fault in sharing feedback, expertise, contacts, and opportunities with me. This book would not have been published without him.

Several kind people in the publishing industry helped me along the way with no ultimate benefit to themselves. Among them, Howard Yoon and Melanie Tortoroli each gave precious input. A few agents and editors also offered thoughtful feedback, including Giles Anderson, Max Brockman, Joseph Calamia, Amy Caldwell, Laurie Harting, Jeff Kehoe, Rafe Sagalyn, Jeevan Sivasubramaniam, Anna Sproul-Latimer, Andrew Stuart, and Elizabeth Wales. Authors Ben Mezrich and Evgeny Morozov provided timely advice. Thank you.

I’m also grateful to Patrick Newell for inviting me to speak at the beautifully organized TEDxTokyo in 2010 (
http://j.mp/ktTEDxTokyo
).

The ideas in this book were fostered through close engagements with a number of organizations. I thank P. Anandan, Dan Ling, Rick Rashid, and Craig Mundie for the incredible opportunity to cofound Microsoft Research India, and to my colleagues in the Technology for Emerging Markets group for all of our research adventures – Ed Cutrell, Jonathan Donner, Rikin Gandhi, David Hutchful, Paul Javid, Indrani Medhi, Saurabh Panjwani, Udai Singh Pawar, Archana Prasad, Nimmi Rangaswamy, Aishwarya Lakshmi Ratan, Bill Thies, Rajesh Veeraraghavan, and Randy Wang. Teaching at Ashesi University was the chance of a
lifetime, and it was Patrick Awuah, Nina Marini, and the Ashesi Class of 2005 who made that possible. The Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi was kind to induct me as a fellow of the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and I have enjoyed speaking with other fellows. David Edelstein, Caroline Figueres, Rikin Gandhi, Bookda Gheisar, Dean Karlan, Deo Niyizonkiza, Bhagya Rangachar, and Cliff Schmidt each invited me to join their respective nonprofits – Grameen Foundation, IICD, Digital Green, Global Washington, Innovations for Poverty Action, Village Health Works, CLT, and Literacy Bridge – as board member or adviser, and I’ve learned a lot from an insider’s view of their work.

Some sections rely on interviews with people who graciously shared their time: Regina Agyare, Patrick Awuah, Roy Baumeister, Abdul Mannan Choudhury, Jayshree Diggi, Ann Downer, Julia Driver, Esther Duflo, David Ellerman, Abraham George, Anirban Ghose, Chris Howard, Ron Inglehart, Deep Joshi, Neelima Khetan, Gary King, Kavitha L., Lalitha Law, Jorge Perez-Luna, A. V. M. Sahni, Barry Schwartz, Priyanka Singh, Tara Sreenivasa, Vera te Velde, Isaac Tuggun, and Mark Warschauer. I hope I’ve accurately represented their views, even where we might disagree.

The survey of Kenyan aspirations mentioned in
Chapter 8
was conducted by Victor Rateng at Synovate. Thanks also to Shikoh Gitau and Joel Lehmann for help with the survey, and especially to Nathalia Rodriguez Vega for analysis.

Many people critiqued my drafts. A big “thank you” to all! Bill Thies and Suze Woolf went beyond anything I could have hoped for by providing meaningful notes on every chapter. Bill also helped me clarify a few tricky passages in detail. I’m also indebted to the following people for their in-depth critique of a few chapters: Nana Boateng, Henry Corrigan-Gibbs, James Davis, Mauricio Gonzalez De La Fuente, Ted McCarthy, Anita Prakash, Francisco Proenza, Roni Rosenfeld, and Eduardo Villanueva. Several professional editors – Simon Waxman, Jenna Free, Connie Chapman, and Christina Henry de Tessan – provided additional excellent suggestions.

I was blessed with many friends and acquaintances who each read one or more chapters: Shabnam Aggarwal, Varun Aggarwal, Jyotsna Agrawal, Michael Aldridge, Marika Arcese, Varun Arora, Sri Arumugam, Patrick Awuah, Sateesh Babu, Savita Bailur, Anton Bakalov, Rashmir Balasubramaniam, Eugene Bardach, Joanna Bargeron, Jason Belcher, Garima Bhatia, Lillian Bridges, Paolo Brunello, Fujin Butsudo, Cindy Chen, Gerry Chu, Melody Clark, Joshua Cohen, Carola Conces, Mo Corston-Oliver, Paul Currion, Melissa Densmore, Ron Dirkse, Jonathan Donner, Krittika D’Silva, George Durham, Hans-Juergen Engelbrecht, Lauri Ericson, Caroline Figueres, Sybille Fleischman, Rikin Gandhi, Ankur Garg, Maria Gargiulo, Anirban Ghose, Seshagiri GS, Leba Haber, Christopher Hoadley, Vigneswaran Ilavarasan, Ryan Jacobs, Susan Jeffords, Jofish Kaye, Itamar Kimchi, Anirudh Krishna,
Neha Kumar, Richa Kumar, Kimmo Kuusilinna, Susie J. Lee, Natalie Linnell, Andie Long, Tracey Lovejoy, Adnan Mahmud, Meghana Marathe, Derek Mathis, Indrani Medhi, Ghulam Murtaza, Satyajit Nath, Muchiri Nyaggah, Flavio Oliveira, Michael Paik, Diana Pallais, Saurabh Panjwani, Dan Perkel, Gretchen Philips, Sean Policarpio, Sammia Poveda, Abhishek Prateek, Barath Raghavan, Seema Ramchandani, Jon Rosenberg, Atsushi Sakahara, Sambit Satpathy, Jonathan Scanlon, Kevin Schofield, Frank Schott, Scott Stossel, Thomas Stossel, Jeff Swindle, Heather Thorne, Dan Toyama, Haruki Toyama, Toni Tsvetanova, Dipti Vaghela, Rama Vedashree, Rajesh Veeraraghavan, Jonathan Wai, Lowell Weiss, Renee Wittemeyer, Treena Wu, and Mel Young.

Additionally, my writing benefited from conversations and other forms of support from many, many people: Debbie Apsley, Özlem Ayduk, Marika Arcese, Siva Athreya, Garima Bhatia, Chris Blattman, Peter Blomquist, Maurizio Bricola, Jenna Burrell, Suvojit Chattopadhyay, Deepti Chittamuru, Magdalena Claro, Josh Cohen, Kristina Cordero, David Daballen, Kristen Dailey, John Danner, Ankhi Das, Alain de Janvry, Thad Dunning, Paolo Ficarelli, Greg Fischer, Bablu Ganguly, Maria Gargiulo, Achintya Ghosh, Rachel Glennerster, Richa Govil, Jürgen Hagmann, Naomi Handa-Williams, Saskia Harmsen, Gaël Hernández, Melissa Ho, Shanti Jayanthasri, Rob Jensen, Ashok Jhunjhunwala, Joseph Joy, Pritam Kabe, Ken Keniston, Neelima Khetan, Jessica Kiessel, Michael Kremer, Ramchandar Krishnamurthy, Antony Lekoitip, Miep Lenoir, Julia Lowe, Jeff MacKie-Mason, Drew McDermott, Patricia Mecheal, Pavithra Mehta, Ted Miguel, Eduardo Monge, Rohan Murty, Miguel Nussbaum, Chip Owen, Tapan Parikh, Paul Polak, Madhavi Raj, Ranjeet Ranade, Gautam Rao, Eric Ringger, Hans Rosling, Elisabeth Sadoulet, Maximiliano Santa Cruz Scantlebury, Jonathan Scanlon, Denise Senmartin, Jahanzeb Sherwani, Priyanka Singh, Pratima Stanton, Rick Szeliski, Steve Toben, Mike Trucano, Avinash Upadhyay, Dipti Vaghela, Suzanne van der Velden, Srikant Vasan, Wayan Vota, Terry Winograd, Christian Witt, Renee Wittemeyer, and Naa Lamle Wulff.

As much as I criticize technology hype, I’m not against technology per se. Let me own up to my big debts to digital technology: I wrote this book in Microsoft Word on an Asus laptop running Windows. My research was greatly facilitated by Google and Wikipedia. I found several out-of-print books on Amazon. Facebook allowed me to conduct informal surveys. And Twitter and other social media will play a part in book tours.

The title
Geek Heresy
comes from a May 6, 2011, article written about me by Tom Paulson, founder of the Humanosphere nonprofit news organization (see
www.humanosphere.org
). Tom has since become a close friend, and I’ve joined his nonprofit’s board to support its uniquely fearless reporting about global development.

I’m immensely grateful to Clive Priddle at PublicAffairs and Jim Levine at Levine Greenberg Roston Literary Agency for seeing potential in my book and
encouraging my aspirations. Through extensive revisions, Clive and his colleague Maria Goldverg made insightful recommendations and saved me from a glut of word count and self-indulgence. I’d also like to thank Melissa Raymond and Rachel King for production oversight, Kathy Streckfus for painstaking copyediting, Pete Garceau and Cynthia Young for book design, Catherine Bowman for indexing, Lori Lewis for proofreading, and Lindsay Fradkoff, Jaime Leifer, and Nicole Counts for marketing and publicty.

Any excesses that remain are due to my own stubbornness. I began this book with what I learned through research and personal experience, but as I pulled on the thread of the technological problems immediately in front of me, I found that it led me through a larger labyrinth that couldn’t be understood in fragments. My earnest hope is that the whole, if fuzzy or flawed in the details, nevertheless presents an overall vision that is both coherent and compelling. Or at least thought-provoking.