Of communists and capitalists

If you read one book this week

Red Notice: How I Became Putin's No1 Enemy by Bill Browder (Bantam Press) R330

A real-life thriller, this is perhaps the year's most astonishing business book. Browder's family were American communists, so he decided to become Europe's biggest capitalist - and did so, going on to be the largest foreign investor in Russia. In 2008, his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, testified against Russian officials who had stolen some $230-million (now almost R2.67-billion) in taxes from his companies and, for his troubles, was arrested and tortured for a year before he was handcuffed to a bed and beaten to death in an isolation chamber. Browder concludes his gripping account with this grim note: "I have to assume that there is a very real chance that Putin or members of his regime will have me killed someday. If I'm killed, you will know who did it."

The issue

Beware, then, the technocrats. Or so Silicon Valley commentator Andrew Keen warns in a new manifesto, The Internet Is Not The Answer (Atlantic). They have, he argues, attempted to monetise almost all human activity; their effect on our culture, economy, privacy and society has been disastrous. With the establishment of the world wide web in 1989, cyber-idealists started waxing lyrical about the emergence of truer democracy, especially in the world of commerce. It was all a façade, Keen claims, to mask the true ideology of Silicon Valley: right-wing, elitist, libertarian and characteristic of the worst of Ayn Rand's lunatic forays against altruism.

Consider some recent long-term projects by these people. Google co-founder Larry Page wants to set up a "stateless" walled compound in San Francisco Bay where its mostly white, mostly male "smart creatives" would be free to do whatever it is they do uninhibited by laws or poor people. PayPal's co-founder Peter Thiel wants to set up "state-free" islands for the rich and smart in the Pacific, while his partner, South African-born Elon Musk, has been banging on about a colony on Mars for 80 000 clever people. Elsewhere, there is much chatter that Silicon Valley should secede from the US.

These "secessionist fantasies", as Keen calls them, are a symptom of a dangerous delusion among the technocracy. The big companies - Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon, Twitter and others - believe they can control the future, and see themselves not as companies, but rather political entities.

More sobering is Keen's analysis of how the social media companies do not invest in job-creating enterprises and yet - perversely - we all work for them anyway. Their prime asset is our information - which we give away free.

The bottom line

"Some people think the hijab is used to oppress women. I used it to oppress my parents." - Laughing All the Way to the Mosque: The Misadventures of a Muslim Woman by Zarqa Nawaz (Virago)