A False Narrative That is Unfortunately Very Sticky: Ageism and Tech

We decry the lack of wisdom in Silicon Valley. Yet the youngish scribes in the tech press perpetuate a myth that no matter the year, anyone over 40 doesn't know how to turn on a computer.

We're on a hamster wheel: young professionals work in tech; they gain experience in lawmaking; they get elected to lower office, then higher office; they're ready to hold hearings, or make sensible laws. ... And then tech journalists vying for tech CEO access start the enabling: Sorry electeds! You're too old to understand this, you were born (we youngsters assume) before TV was invented.

A blogger for the established Spectator magazine promoting his book said this in response to the April 10 senate hearings:

First every politician needs to roughly understand what an algorithm is (rules based instructions for a programme) and roughly how they work. This should probably include some understanding of what they are generally good at (repetitive, rules-based tasks) and what they are not (unpredictable ones). All politicians should also know how representative – or not – various social media platforms are of real human beings. It’s important that they aren’t suckered into believing every Brietbart or Sqwawkbox viral represents what actual ordinary people think.

This writer disagrees with the Spectator blogger. Electeds know what an algorithm is. If you watched the hearings you'd see Senator Hatch knew the answer to the questions he was asking, as any skilled prosecutor does. Why else would Senator Hatch be reading from a prepared typed script? He was opening a debate on data sharing, data mining, and transparency surrounding personal data-informed ad targeting.

Hatch: This is the most intense public scrutiny I've seen for a tech-related hearing since the Microsoft hearing that I chaired back in the late 1990s.

The recent stories about Cambridge Analytica and data mining on social media have raised serious concerns about consumer privacy and naturally I know you understand that. At the same time these stories touch on the very foundation of the internet economy, and the way the websites that drive the internet economy make money.

Some have professed themselves shocked, shocked! That Facebook and Google share user data with advertisers. Did any of these individuals ever stop to ask themselves why Facebook and Google don't charge for access? Nothing in life is free!

Everything involves trade-offs. If you want something without having to pay money for it, you're going to have to pay for it in some other way, it seems to me. And that's what we're seeing here. And these great websties that don't charge for access, they extract value in some other way. And there's nothing wrong with that, as long as they're up front about what they're doing.

To my mind the issue here is transparency. It's consumer choice. Do users understand what they're agreeing to when they access a website or agree to terms of service? Are websites up front about how they extract value from users, or do they hide the ball? Do consumers have the information they need to make an informed choice regarding whether or not they're to visit a particular website?

To my mind, these are questions that we should ask, or be focusing on. Now, Mr. Zuckerberg I remember well your first visit to Capital Hill in 2010. You spoke to the senate republican high tech task force which I chair, you said back then that Facebook would always be free. Is that still your objective?

Zuckerberg: Senator, yes. There will always be a version of Facebook that is free. It is our misssion to try to help connect everyone around the world and to bring the world closer together. In order to do that we need to offer a service that everyone can afford, and we're committed to doing that.

Hatch: Well if so, how do you sustain a business model in which users don't pay for your service?

Zuckerberg: Senator, we run ads! [smirk]

Hatch: [Pauses. Peaks up from notes. Mentally notes smirk.] I see. That's great. Whenever a controversy like this arises, there's always a danger that Congress' response will be to step in, and over-regulate...

We don't want to waste too many posts defending a Republican senator from Utah. We just need to reiterate that the first impression of the senate Zuckerberg hearings may not match a second impression of those same hearings, or reality itself.

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Further Reading:

Why the Cooling Saucer Senate Appeared 'So Old' at Zuckerberg Hearings: offlinereport.blogspot.com

2015: Another ageism lawsuit against Google. The job candidate wrote sample code for an interviewer and shared the code via email and Google docs. The interviewer, who was using a speaker phone that didn't work well, instead required the candidate to "read the program coding over the phone." The interviewer "seemed not to understand" what was being read, and the candidate was not offered the job. computerworld.com

"With age and experience comes wisdom, or so the saying goes, but when it comes to being a developer is it a job you can pursue into middle age?"   techrepublic.com

"For years, job hunting over the age of 40 in the youth-obsessed Silicon Valley could prove hazardous to your career. But judging from the experiences of technology workers roaming the country in search of job opportunities elsewhere, ageism is a universal problem in the industry."   usatoday.com









This work by AJ Fish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.