I was recording a podcast with Matthew Panzarino, editor of TechCrunch yesterday and the conversation turned to current state of Silicon Valley, and the point I made was that as an industry we have been focused on a limited set of metrics – growth and intelligence, for example. Sure, like any intellectually intensive industry needs … Continue reading Tech needs Emotional Intelligence
Late November last year, I wrote a piece about Silicon Valley’s Empathy Vacuum for The New Yorker. It seemed to have struck a chord with a lot of people, especially in our industry. I am glad we started to talk about the issues we don’t normally talk about — the human consequence of disruption and … Continue reading From Tech’s Empathy Vacuum to Zuck’s 2017 Challenge
First of all, kudos to Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg and team for recognizing the issues around affordable housing in the area of the technology boom. For more context, here is a statement that Mark published on his Facebook page. Affordable housing is an important problem across the world. Our goal is to connect people everywhere, and that starts with … Continue reading Facebook’s Affordable Housing Efforts: Not Enough
“Inadvertent Algorithmic Cruelty” is an emotional piece by Eric Meyer who lost his daughter earlier in the year and was reminded of his painful loss by what is seemingly a thoughtless Facebook product feature. It was an attempt by Facebook to be more human instead of being a utility, but in the end it inadvertently ended up upsetting Eric and others.
It was a rude and very real reminder that, no matter how well-intentioned, our software-enabled society is far from being empathetic and understanding of human reality. Facebook, which as a company serves 1.25 billion people, wants to be empathetic. And so do others like them. The question is how, and how fast, can we make software take on empathetic qualities, especially as we continue to pray at the altar of “growth at any cost.” Continue reading “Empathy isn’t a corporate slogan”
