Social Justice in Tech: Does Big Tech need a Fix?

Ahead of the Curves
Written By Matthew Gwyther

5 minute read 37 minutes of interviews and audio

Time was when Big Tech could do no wrong. It had the answer to all our problems. So confident were we that Tech had the answer to all the earth’s needs that people wrote books with titles like “What Would Google Do?” All those Californian T-shirted guys (and they usually were guys) on their skateboards were so smart they had the answer to everything on the planet. And beyond our planet - they were going into space and be bigger than Nasa. Nothing was beyond their capability to take on and improve. How times have changed. Those super-smart giants have been shown to have feet of clay. They have caused more problems than they have solved. The Brave New World turned out to be full of dodgy apples. Now the books are titled ‘The Net Delusion’ or ‘A World Without Mind.’ Simon Jenkins in ‘The Guardian’ recently gave Mark Zuckerberg and Google both barrels, chiding himself for ever thinking they had the answer to all our woes.  ‘Not a day passes without apocalyptic wails against the internet. It promotes paedophilia, grooming, bullying, harassment, trolling, humiliation, intrusion, false accusation and libel. It aids terrorism, cyberwarfare, political lying, fake news, state censorship, summary injustice. It enriches a tiny few, dodges taxes, respects no borders and forces millions out of work.

The internet companies, while pretending to be utilities not publishers, manipulate and censor news. They see humans as algorithm factories, bundled for maximum advertising revenue. The “global village” is no village at all, just trillions of zombie consumers hard-wired to a handset. Who on Earth thought it a good idea?’

Ahead of the Stifel/ Jericho roundtable looking at the issues of Tech: Men, Women and Social Justice, this podcast looks specifically at the accusation that the industry has done very badly on the diversity front with all sorts of negative consequences. It includes interviews with Eithne O’Leary and Thom Weisel of Stifel, Check Warner of Diversity VC, Margaret Heffernan, Caroline Plumb and ex-minister of state Ed Vaizey. It’s presented by Jericho partner Matthew Gwyther.

Matthew Gwyther

Matthew edited Management Today for 17 years and during that time won the coveted  BSME Business Magazine Editor of the year on a record five occasions. During a fifteen year career as a freelance he wrote for the Sunday Times magazine, The Independent, The Telegraph, The Observer, GQ and was a contributing editor to Business magazine. He was PPA Business Feature Writer of the Year in 2001. He has also worked on two drama serials one for Channel 4 and one for the BBC.  Before becoming a journalist he had a brief and inauspicious spell as a civil servant working at the Medical Research Council in its London Secretariat.

Matthew is the main presenter on BBC Radio 4’s In Business programme.

Matthew is also the co-author of Exposure published by Penguin in London and New York in the Autumn of 2012. It is the story of whistleblower Michael Woodford, the “Southend samurai” who left school at 16 and worked his way up to the top post of the Japanese industrial conglomerate Olympus, only to discover that his board were involved in a two billion dollar fraud.

Contact: matthew.gwyther@jerichochambers.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-gwyther-8b043210/
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