Dana Blankenhorn

Facebook is Not Immoral

Facebook is amoral.

There’s a difference. The New Yorker knows this.  But, like Mark Zuckerberg, Conde Nast doesn’t care.

An immoral actor deliberately does things they know are wrong.

An amoral actor does things without regard to whether they’re wrong or not.

Facebook can’t afford to be moral. No tech company can. Creative destruction happens so fast I barely have time to call a company “clueless” before it faces the consequences. (Hello, Zillow.)

Corporate graveyards are littered with the molding corpses of companies that tried to defy this axiom. I have been watching tech for four decades now. It’s beyond obvious.

The Gilded Age of Software

Rising prices have given a new boost to software stocks.

It’s because software is the best way to fight inflation. Automate what people did, replace humans with code, and you cut costs. It’s just Moore’s Law in action.

A year ago, the pandemic gave a big boost to software stocks. Software was the best way to keep the economy going.

There’s irony in this because software is still made by hand. And unlike this story, software maintains its utility, even increases in value, the more it’s used.

This has long been obvious in my house.

My wife became a computer programmer in 1982, supplementing my income as a business reporter. My career remained on a high until the dot-bomb in 2000. Since then, hers has gone from strength-to-strength.