Fake Innovators

MIT, that paradigm of technological innovation, is reporting that an article by Marc Andreessen shows how Silicon Valley is unable to construct real solutions for the public’s basic needs in the context of a pandemic. Andreessen discusses “a failure of action, and specifically our widespread inability to “build.”

Technology’s false innovation is not aimed at building anything; not vaccines, respirators, prostheses, medications or goods. The things we really need aren’t being developed, Andreessen says.

And he is absolutely right. We have seen digital technology and high-tech companies focus on generating products that are unnecessary, luxurious and disposable.

The big technology companies don’t build anything, Andreessen says, adding that it’s not likely that they will give us vaccines or diagnostic tests. “We don’t even have enough … cotton swabs,” says Andreessen, who sees U.S. corporations as the least capable of generating solutions and proposals when confronting COVID-19.*

It is the same here, where our entrepreneurs and innovators have only copied and pasted examples from Silicon Valley. Hugo Pardo Kuklinski has long said these contained mistakes from which it is necessary to learn, that they were not something to imitate but to surpass.**

Where are the thousands of high-tech entrepreneurs who set up businesses in the past decade? Where is the pool of ideas, where are the accelerators, the incubators and think tanks for digital transformation delivering rapid and agile solutions in this pandemic?

We are simply repeating the failures of Silicon Valley. We have learned nothing. Instead, we deified those who sold us a lot of hot air, and kept asking them what to do and how to make the most of digital platforms, instead of pushing them to help us with what we really need. Fake innovators. Charlatans.

*Editor’s note: Although accurately translated, these remarks could not be independently verified.

**Hugo Pardo Kuklinski is CEO and founder of Outliers School in Argentina which focuses on digital culture and communication.