24. How Facebook is Bad for Everything
The after lunch session in the big ballroom on Sunday starred a fascinating character: Roger McNamee, and a headline subject: Facebook.
McNamee was one of the first mentors to Mark Zuckerberg, and then one of the first investors in Facebook. He may have made a lot of money from that investment, which he may still hold, even though - newsflash - his views on Facebook have changed, a lot, and he now thinks its bad for the whole world.
If you were there you would have this thought this session was an interesting contrast to the first one of SXSW, where Priscilla Chan talked about the CZI and Facebook's efforts to do good. You would have been part of a crowd of more than a thousand people listening to McNamee's constantly controversial claims. I'll split it into a couple of posts, because he said a lot, but you would have found the basis of his whole thesis to be that Silicon Valley is a basically amoral place.
Its amorality dates back to the group of men that McNamee calls the Paypal Mafia. He tells you that this group of key startup founders have changed the whole business with their belief that they weren't responsible or what people did with their creations. Mark Zuckerberg simply followed their philosophy.
'They aren't bad people,' McNamee says. 'But no one ever told them where the edges were.'
McNamee was one of the first mentors to Mark Zuckerberg, and then one of the first investors in Facebook. He may have made a lot of money from that investment, which he may still hold, even though - newsflash - his views on Facebook have changed, a lot, and he now thinks its bad for the whole world.
If you were there you would have this thought this session was an interesting contrast to the first one of SXSW, where Priscilla Chan talked about the CZI and Facebook's efforts to do good. You would have been part of a crowd of more than a thousand people listening to McNamee's constantly controversial claims. I'll split it into a couple of posts, because he said a lot, but you would have found the basis of his whole thesis to be that Silicon Valley is a basically amoral place.
Its amorality dates back to the group of men that McNamee calls the Paypal Mafia. He tells you that this group of key startup founders have changed the whole business with their belief that they weren't responsible or what people did with their creations. Mark Zuckerberg simply followed their philosophy.
'They aren't bad people,' McNamee says. 'But no one ever told them where the edges were.'
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