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There are too many things wrong in Silicon Valley. One has difficulty trying to keep up with why we’re mad with what tech company at any given moment. Are we still mad at Facebook for selling our data, or are we now mad at YouTube for allowing a mass murderer in New Zealand to broadcast his rampage online? Are we mad at Google for its negligence with its algorithm or for letting Nazis post content anywhere they’d like? We don’t know all the time why we should hate Silicon Valley, but we just know that we should. No matter what they’ve done, we just know they’re to blame.
One reason we place blame on tech companies is that it’s easy. Like blaming “Hollywood” or “the video games,” “Silicon Valley” is a big enough term that can absorb a lot of verbal and digital punches without anyone asking questions.
And certainly the transgressions are many. There’s almost no tech company valued over a billion dollars that hasn’t gotten there without its fair share of sins. But as a pastor and theologian located right in the middle of Silicon Valley, I’m deeply interested in this question: why are these companies behaving so badly? How come the senior executives with unbelievable power rarely navigate towards integrity but instead to head towards manipulation, oppression, and greed?
