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Schmidt was pretty clear in his book that he believes his business success is an indicator of virtue, and that he believes he should use Google and his wealth t

Schmidt was pretty clear in his book that he believes his business success is an indicator of virtue, and that he believes he should use Google and his wealth to intentionally seek to manipulate modern culture. It's a disturbing notion and I've never understood why people weren't more concerned about it. If every significant avenue of communication used by people is controlled and censored by a group, no matter who it is, there is no option for progress. Any attempt to change social values will inevitably run up against a wall of not being able to actually express proof that societies values have changed. Imagine if tomorrow every human being on Earth woke up realizing nudity is a strange thing to get worked up about. What would happen? The idea would die, isolated, because even if people said they thought nudity was fine, they could never prove it as the communications networks they use would censor out anything containing nudity, stultifying culture and freezing it to whatever was acceptable in the early 2000s.

kylestlb 9y ago
As to your first paragraph, many companies and founders would say the the same thing, no? "We want to change the world by doing X (through their business)". Also, what other metric for success is there in the current culture of the USA other than business success? Not that I'm saying that's bad or good...
- mercer 9y ago
  I think you're correct, but the scary thing in this case is that Google/Alphabet might actually be able to do it, for better and worse.
mercer 9y ago
> Schmidt was pretty clear in his book that he believes his business success is an indicator of virtue, and that he believes he should use Google and his wealth to intentionally seek to manipulate modern culture. Which book, and could you perhaps share some excerpts, or a link with more information?
xienze 9y ago
> and that he believes he should use Google and his wealth to intentionally seek to manipulate modern culture. It's a disturbing notion and I've never understood why people weren't more concerned about it. Because they're pushing the progressive agenda, so who in the media, government, or academia is going to stand in their way? As far as those parties are concerned, Google is doing what corporations "should" do.
- sangnoir 9y ago
  > Because they're pushing the progressive agenda I would say Shmidt's agenda is more neo-liberal than progressive. Not that I endorse it, but corporations pushing an agenda is not new[1] and not limited to the left[2][3], so not even conservative media will stand in their way either since that has been happening for a long time on the right. 1. http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/12/12338/shilling-profit-case-study-alecs-campaign-against-divestment-apartheid-south http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/12/12338/shilling-profit-ca... 2. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hobby-lobby-wins-contraceptive-ruling-supreme-court/story?id=24364311 http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hobby-lobby-wins-contraceptiv... 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick-fil-A_same-sex_marriage_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick-fil-A_same-sex_marriage_...
  - WillPostForFood 9y ago
    Hobby Lobby and Chick-fil-A aren't out sending hundreds of millions financing think tanks and lobbyists in Washington, they are just trying to run their own business with their own agenda. And the scale of the companies are orders of magnitude smaller than Google, both are medium sized family owned businesses.
    - r00fus 9y ago
      Clearly this is just "business" [1]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/28/hobby-lobby-investigated-ancient-artifacts-iraq https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/28/hobby-lobby-...
659087 9y ago
> Schmidt was pretty clear in his book that he believes his business success is an indicator of virtue, and that he believes he should use Google and his wealth to intentionally seek to manipulate modern culture. It's a disturbing notion and I've never understood why people weren't more concerned about it. Google proved that all you need is a colorful logo and a stupid catch phrase ("Don't be evil") to get people to treat you as an infallible, altruistic entity - regardless of the fact that your actions tell a completely different story. Like Apple, Google has become a religion for their fans. As with all religions, inconvenient facts are dutifully ignored by members of the Holy Order of Goog. I find the worship of corporations even more difficult to grasp than Scientology.
- waisbrot 9y ago
  > Google proved that all you need is a colorful logo and a stupid catch phrase ("Don't be evil") to get people to treat you as an infallible, altruistic entity - regardless of the fact that your actions tell a completely different story. I don't think the logo or catch-phrase have much to do with it. Google's search engine was orders of magnitude better than anything else when it came out (that's how they won the market) and they've used their dominance of the web to improve their search to the point where the search box can read your mind. That is why people treat them as good -- because "morally good" and "usefully good" are difficult to separate. You see Apple users (and maybe Linux users?) as religious zealots and assume they must have been tricked by a pretty logo or some CS hazing ritual. What's actually going on is that they're reacting to one very positive experience (maybe along some dimension that you don't care about) and following the human inclination to extrapolate that experience to the whole product/company.
  - actuallyalys 9y ago
    I think you're mostly right. After all, the most hated companies tend to be ones with poor customer service, not ones who do the most harm. I do think Google cultivating an image of being just a quirky group of nerds (rather than a profitable and influential company) contributed to them seeming benign, and their logo and slogan are part of that.
hammock 9y ago
Which is why freedom of assembly is lumped in with freedom of speech. As long as two people can congregate together, they can communicate with one another.
- zo1 9y ago
  Except they're not. And these platforms (Google, Facebook, CloudFlare, Twitter, Youtube, Berkeley, Patreon, Namecheap, etc) are all daily indicating, to varying degrees, that they are willing to step in as a third-party between two consenting individuals "congregating" and "communicating" in order to censor them. Such individuals, if they choose to say things that the platform doesn't like at an institutional level, then they don't have that right anymore because they get removed/de-listed,banned/de-platformed. Generally, I'm a free-market person, and I'd advocate that entities should have the right to deal with their own platform how they see fit. But in this case, they're collaborating with traditional media, learning institutions and social-agenda groups in order to create a giant echo chamber. We're watching that play out right now in that certain non-left and non-pc speech behavior is condemned and those that wish to express them are de-platformed. We may not always agree with those points, or find them palatable, but up until now I think we've been navigating a middle-line where general public opinion ebbed and flowed between the two sides. It's tipped incredibly to one side on numerous issues, and I'm afraid that a specific set of viewpoints are now pervading our society. Once it gets to a point, it's only a matter of time before entire generations are raised believing only the accepted-viewpoint. It may be a bad example, but you see it happening already in public-schools where teachers are actively pushing social-agenda issues onto their kids. It happened with anti-Trump attitudes, with transgender-activism, gender-gaps, race-activism, etc. One side is accepted, and debate is silenced, and teachers are forced or encouraged to teach those things to impressionable young minds instead of encouraging free debate. Further, if you ask most conservatives, they actively disagree with a lot of those things even if it's from the perspective of government-meddling. Conservatives are generally half the population, so something is definitely skewed and going wrong.
kadenshep 9y ago
>Schmidt was pretty clear in his book that he believes his business success is an indicator of virtue Quote the relevant parts so people can see how hyperbolic you're being.

kylestlb 9y ago

As to your first paragraph, many companies and founders would say the the same thing, no? "We want to change the world by doing X (through their business)". Also, what other metric for success is there in the current culture of the USA other than business success? Not that I'm saying that's bad or good...

mercer 9y ago
I think you're correct, but the scary thing in this case is that Google/Alphabet might actually be able to do it, for better and worse.

mercer 9y ago

xienze 9y ago

> and that he believes he should use Google and his wealth to intentionally seek to manipulate modern culture. It's a disturbing notion and I've never understood why people weren't more concerned about it. Because they're pushing the progressive agenda, so who in the media, government, or academia is going to stand in their way? As far as those parties are concerned, Google is doing what corporations "should" do.

sangnoir 9y ago
> Because they're pushing the progressive agenda I would say Shmidt's agenda is more neo-liberal than progressive. Not that I endorse it, but corporations pushing an agenda is not new[1] and not limited to the left[2][3], so not even conservative media will stand in their way either since that has been happening for a long time on the right. 1. http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/12/12338/shilling-profit-case-study-alecs-campaign-against-divestment-apartheid-south http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/12/12338/shilling-profit-ca... 2. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hobby-lobby-wins-contraceptive-ruling-supreme-court/story?id=24364311 http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hobby-lobby-wins-contraceptiv... 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick-fil-A_same-sex_marriage_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick-fil-A_same-sex_marriage_...
- WillPostForFood 9y ago
  Hobby Lobby and Chick-fil-A aren't out sending hundreds of millions financing think tanks and lobbyists in Washington, they are just trying to run their own business with their own agenda. And the scale of the companies are orders of magnitude smaller than Google, both are medium sized family owned businesses.
  - r00fus 9y ago
    Clearly this is just "business" [1]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/28/hobby-lobby-investigated-ancient-artifacts-iraq https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/28/hobby-lobby-...

659087 9y ago

> Schmidt was pretty clear in his book that he believes his business success is an indicator of virtue, and that he believes he should use Google and his wealth to intentionally seek to manipulate modern culture. It's a disturbing notion and I've never understood why people weren't more concerned about it. Google proved that all you need is a colorful logo and a stupid catch phrase ("Don't be evil") to get people to treat you as an infallible, altruistic entity - regardless of the fact that your actions tell a completely different story. Like Apple, Google has become a religion for their fans. As with all religions, inconvenient facts are dutifully ignored by members of the Holy Order of Goog. I find the worship of corporations even more difficult to grasp than Scientology.

waisbrot 9y ago
> Google proved that all you need is a colorful logo and a stupid catch phrase ("Don't be evil") to get people to treat you as an infallible, altruistic entity - regardless of the fact that your actions tell a completely different story. I don't think the logo or catch-phrase have much to do with it. Google's search engine was orders of magnitude better than anything else when it came out (that's how they won the market) and they've used their dominance of the web to improve their search to the point where the search box can read your mind. That is why people treat them as good -- because "morally good" and "usefully good" are difficult to separate. You see Apple users (and maybe Linux users?) as religious zealots and assume they must have been tricked by a pretty logo or some CS hazing ritual. What's actually going on is that they're reacting to one very positive experience (maybe along some dimension that you don't care about) and following the human inclination to extrapolate that experience to the whole product/company.
- actuallyalys 9y ago
  I think you're mostly right. After all, the most hated companies tend to be ones with poor customer service, not ones who do the most harm. I do think Google cultivating an image of being just a quirky group of nerds (rather than a profitable and influential company) contributed to them seeming benign, and their logo and slogan are part of that.

hammock 9y ago

Which is why freedom of assembly is lumped in with freedom of speech. As long as two people can congregate together, they can communicate with one another.

zo1 9y ago
Except they're not. And these platforms (Google, Facebook, CloudFlare, Twitter, Youtube, Berkeley, Patreon, Namecheap, etc) are all daily indicating, to varying degrees, that they are willing to step in as a third-party between two consenting individuals "congregating" and "communicating" in order to censor them. Such individuals, if they choose to say things that the platform doesn't like at an institutional level, then they don't have that right anymore because they get removed/de-listed,banned/de-platformed. Generally, I'm a free-market person, and I'd advocate that entities should have the right to deal with their own platform how they see fit. But in this case, they're collaborating with traditional media, learning institutions and social-agenda groups in order to create a giant echo chamber. We're watching that play out right now in that certain non-left and non-pc speech behavior is condemned and those that wish to express them are de-platformed. We may not always agree with those points, or find them palatable, but up until now I think we've been navigating a middle-line where general public opinion ebbed and flowed between the two sides. It's tipped incredibly to one side on numerous issues, and I'm afraid that a specific set of viewpoints are now pervading our society. Once it gets to a point, it's only a matter of time before entire generations are raised believing only the accepted-viewpoint. It may be a bad example, but you see it happening already in public-schools where teachers are actively pushing social-agenda issues onto their kids. It happened with anti-Trump attitudes, with transgender-activism, gender-gaps, race-activism, etc. One side is accepted, and debate is silenced, and teachers are forced or encouraged to teach those things to impressionable young minds instead of encouraging free debate. Further, if you ask most conservatives, they actively disagree with a lot of those things even if it's from the perspective of government-meddling. Conservatives are generally half the population, so something is definitely skewed and going wrong.

kadenshep 9y ago

>Schmidt was pretty clear in his book that he believes his business success is an indicator of virtue Quote the relevant parts so people can see how hyperbolic you're being.