Reid Hoffman: recommendation

Transcript context

…And that you agree with, you’re saying? Well, I agree that the technological companies are a very important Archimedean lever. What I disagree with is that, as those levers become more important to society, I think that we can’t actually, in fact, say, “We should not be in discourse with society about what we’re doing.” Because actually, in fact, once you begin to have society-level impact, not just a, “Oh, look, here’s a new social game or something else, here is a new Zynga game that’s fun to play.” Okay, who cares? I mean, it’s fun. Maybe hundreds of millions of people do it, but that doesn’t actually impact the way that society operates. The fact is, as we get to the way that society operates, we need to add in interaction with society, accountability on the design principles and the philosophy by which we are affecting society. We have to integrate in ways by which society can give us feedback. That doesn’t necessarily always mean direction. Maybe sometimes there’s regulation or other things, but an ability to be in conversation with them. If you look at it, my view would be that, as you have more successful tech companies that have an impact on society as a whole, part of what you should start doing is deliberately engaging in discourse with the various institutions of society in a public way, to say, “Here is the kinds of things that not only are we doing now, but what we’re trying to create in the future. ” If tech companies are such an important Archimedean point, why has productivity growth, and indeed GDP growth, been slower since the late 1990s? We’ve had a lot more tech, right?…

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