Tolerance

 One of the disquieting awkwardnesses of the later stages of life is the realization that there now are many important concepts and institutions that are younger than you are.

For example, you might say that people my age are older than human rights.

That somewhat shocking assertion is based in the fact that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights wasn’t issued by the UN until late 1948, after we early Baby Boomers had already toddled onto the scene.

It is a tragic reality of human history that it took until the end of World War II for the world to get around to taking such an elemental step toward equality and justice.

Then again, women only got the right to vote in the U.S. a century ago, and racial segregation persisted into the 1960s. Sexism and racial discrimination remain embedded structurally in our society to this day.

The achievement of full human rights anywhere on the planet remains elusive and aspirational, which is why the work of advocacy organizations devoted to exposing human rights abuses is so important.

Lately I’ve become newly curious about origin of our fundamental concepts of human rights. Historians have long traced it back to 539 BC, when Cyrus the Great conquered the city of Babylon, freed the slaves, and declared that people should have a choice in their religion.

This inspired many of the reforms in Greece, Rome and India — ancient societies that advanced the rights and freedoms of people beyond what previously had been known.

It was many centuries later before seminal advances like the U.S. Declaration of Independence in 1776.

That occurred just over the equivalent of three of my lifetimes ago. We still have a long way to go as a species, but there is some small comfort that over the past 75 years, we’ve made some progress inside the U.S. on civil rights, women’s rights, gay and lesbian rights (if not along the entire spectrum of gender and sexuality), disability rights, and discriminatory practices like ageism, bullying, religious extremism and many other forms of hate.

But those advances are under new assault in our time, including in the U.S..

Let’s commit that over the next 75 years that progress on all of these human rights issues resumes and accelerates in every corner of the globe. Our common humanity requires that to happen. 

Technology: Good or Bad?

 (This is from 2022.)

That is not really the right question.

My intent is to pull away from the pro- and anti-technology camps, and consider the larger picture.

I have personal history as well as friends and family both inside the digital technology industry and among those who blame that industry for our worst social problems here in the Bay Area — especially the high cost of housing.

Since the affection I feel for these people is not conditional on their political positions, I hope they will let me sit this dispute out.

If you think about it, casting blame for street crime, homelessness, high rents and home prices, traffic jams, drug addiction and pollution is a trap that our deeply divided society lures way too many citizens into.

We don’t like certain outcomes so somebody must be to blame — that’s the way our minds work. And it doesn’t help matters at all when politicians in both parties play the blame game ruthlessly, battling over each little inch of political turf as if they were engaged in hand-to-hand combat inside an actual war zone like Ukraine.

When it comes to my own background, I have mainly been a pro-technology voice for a quarter century. My long-term readers and friends know that among traditional journalists I was an early adapter and enthusiast at the dawn of web-based journalism in the 1990s.

I’ve written at great length and positively about my time with HotWired, Wired Digital and Salon, as well as many other digital startup ventures and initiatives. And I remain an advocate for strong web-based journalism to this day.

My last substantial job before retiring was to help build a credible web channel for northern California’s public media company KQED, to complement its legacy TV and radio services. Our team succeeded.

But most relevant to the debate over tech’s current influence in San Francisco were my years blogging for 7x7 and BNET about the emergence of Web 2.0. I recognized the significance of social media companies (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.), and gig economy startups (Lyft, Airbnb, Uber, Getaround, Nextdoor, etc.) early and often.

I also enthusiastically encouraged the decision by those companies, as well as tech giants Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and others to relocate from the peninsula to San Francisco, knowing that it would help transform what in the post-2008-recession years was a sleepy town into a booming metropolis.

That is indeed what has occurred. San Francisco’s population exploded and with that came the worsening of a cluster of social problems, which are now the focus of family arguments, negative political campaigns and absurd recall efforts.

Meanwhile, if you know anything about me, or traditional journalists in general for that matter, you know that instead of taking sides in disputes like this one, we often speak of “holding two opposing ideas” in our heads simultaneously. This comes from years of training and experience investigating complex subjects.

It also is because we have a stake in seeking the truth and not necessarily in being right.

Therefore, I neither blame technology (nor tech workers) for San Francisco’s social problems, nor exonerate them from the responsibility to participate in their adopted municipality’s efforts to address them.

These days, my many friends on the Bay Area left seem to want to blame tech companies and workers in a knee-jerk fashion for what is happening in the city (and many other places) but I fear this is imperfect thinking. The technology industry has improved our lives immeasurably in ways we all now take for granted. We have more powerful communications tools in our pockets today than human begins ever had during our long evolution and more wonders are on the way.

We have a legion of tech startups to thank for that.

Besides, our social problems have many complicated causes beyond anything the latest wave of migrants flocking into our 49-square-mile corner of earth can reasonably be held accountable for.

By the same token, simply by being residents, often with more resources than their neighbors, the tech workers who have streamed into the city bear responsibility to get involved and study the gnarly details of these social problems, and contribute new, constructive ideas to the search for solutions.

Staying back, staying aloof, blankly denouncing government institutions, praising free market solutions, retreating to Darwinian logic is not a healthy contribution. The Libertarian copout so common among techies is an example of incomplete thinking.

San Francisco’s historic commitment to human rights and progressive change is a wonderful thing and rare for a major city. Joining in those traditions of San Francisco is both an opportunity and a privilege — for everyone.

It would be a pity to live here and miss it. So to all of my beloved lefties and techies — listen up.

Please end the blame games. When it comes to the pro-and anti-tech camps, I’m not standing with either of you. The only camp worth joining is one we can all be in together.