Social Justice in Tech: Tech, Power and the Disruptors

The US is home to 15 of the world’s 20 most valuable tech firms. In Europe we have one. Big Tech is unquestionably a stateside thing.  Silicon Valley is where the smart ideas find the most willing piles of money. America is also where controversy rages loudly over how to bring the tech giants to heel, so that they act in the public interest. Tech tycoons have faced roastings in Washington for their firms’ privacy lapses. Elizabeth Warren, a senator who is running for president in 2020, wants Facebook to be broken up. She wants a platform utility to be defined as any internet entity with global revenues over $25 billion. In Europe the recently re-appointed competition commissioner Margaret Vestager has said: “we’re trying to get a hold on this industrial revolution that’s happening right now...it’s very important to get up to speed quickly.”  The author Franklin Foer has argued that tech is different from the sort of monopolies run by robber baron oil tycoons and bankers in the previous two centuries. “More than any previous coterie of corporations , the tech monopolies aspire to mould humanity into their desired image of it. They believe that they have the opportunity to complete the long merger between man and machine - to redirect the trajectory of human evolution.” The heat is on. Eric Schmidt, who recently left the board of Alphabet,  said during his tenure as executive chairman : “I wake up in the morning and I fight regulation. It’s what I do. It’s my job.” His company has now been censured and fined by the EU three times since 2014 and earlier this year got a ticket for $1.7 billion. The share price went up. When it comes to competition Big Tech likes to muscle out or acquire any threatening minnows with promising ideas. The FANGS hoovered up 436 companies in the last ten years. Where the argument was once - “It’s free! How can we be anti-competitive if customers aren’t paying for our service” is heard less frequently these days. So, what is to be done? Governments are frequently ham-fisted when it comes to regulating industries about which they have scant understanding. Where has the trust gone? This podcast includes interviews with Eithne O’Leary, President of SNEL and head of Group, London, Stifel and also Peter Globokar of Stifel; Baroness Denise Kingsmill one time Deputy Chair of the UK Competition and counsel in anti-trust matters to Microsoft; Sir John Hegarty, one of Britain’s most esteemed ad men and now early stage tech investor; and Rachel Coldicott, CEO of the think tank doteveryone. To find out more about the Social Justice in Tech or other Jericho programmes, please get in touch. To subscribe to Jericho podcasts, click here. To work with Jericho as a client, please drop us a line or give us a call.Jericho Conversations is one of a number of initiatives that spontaneously emerged during the first COVID lockdown – part of a determination to use moments of crisis to pivot towards a better, fairer, more equitable and sustainable future for all. By popular demand, we have reignited the series to help find surprising and refreshing solutions and insights into a world in constant flux. Each conversation – led by an expert speaker – is designed to keep Jericho communities engaged and thinking about “what comes next?” for business and society.