Silicon Utopias: the Making of a Tech Startup Ecosystem in Manchester (Uk)
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Richard Pfeilstetter SILICON UTOPIAS: THE MAKING OF A TECH STARTUP ECOSYSTEM IN MANCHESTER (UK) abstract ‘Silicon utopias’, the hope for a green, affluent and happy future through the creation of new tech-businesses, are today informing many urban development processes globally. In this contribution, I look at the recent remodeling of Manchester (Northern England) as an entrepreneurial city. In particular, I present a specific government investment scheme and its relation to the work of a group of local lobbyists who have been promoting a new tech startup community in the city since 2012. Stemming from this empirical example, I explore the interplay between local entrepreneurial dreams and the state’s promotion of startups. The paper concludes with the argument that an anthropologically informed concept of cynicism can contribute to a nuanced reading of silicon utopias and dystopias. Keywords: Startup community, entrepreneurship, Manchester, utopias, cynicism 1 IntroDuction Mason fit the category of utopias of human liberation through technology; utopias which In an information society, no thought, are periodically updated through whatever debate or dream is wasted—whether is a ‘new’ technology in any given moment conceived in a tent camp, prison cell or the (Harvey 1996: 127). Tech(nology), not only table football space of a startup company. in the journalistic domain, is today writ large with software, computer-sustained electronic ‘The end of capitalism has begun’, by Paul devices, internet and a selected number of Mason in The Guardian (2015) related omnipresent global corporations, brands and algorithm-sustained products and services It was at the table football in a co-workspace which have become ubiquitous in everyday in Manchester (Northwest England) where life. Nevertheless, Mason’s reference to the I was reading a very similar slogan written prison cell or the tent camp also indicates on the wall while waiting for the CEO of the association of technology startups with a technology startup company to finish his transgression of the status quo. Besides, labels game for our interview. The prophetic title and such as the information society suggest a specific the oracular words of the BBC journalist Paul kind of symbiosis between technology and suomen antropologi | volume 42 issue 1 spring 2017 91 Richard Pfeilstetter culture as a distinctive feature of this moment in representations of society and the economy. history. Far from being exclusively journalistic Tropes such as ‘the sharing economy’, ‘creative jargon, academia, corporations, the art world industries’ or ‘the information society’ envision and politicians employ quite similar vocabulary present and future worlds, resultant from as Mason and similar self-descriptions of tech computer based technologies, in academic startup companies do exist in everyday practice, writing, technology businesses and ordinary as this contribution will show. How is it, one experience. Anthropologists have rephrased might ask, that business creation, when related Anderson’s ‘imagined communities’ (2001 to digital technology, is seen today as a way to [1983]), to call some of these representations get rich, overcome climate change or promote ‘imagined networks’ (Green et al. 2005: 806) happiness? or ‘imagined worlds’ (Appadurai 1996: 33). The following research report is divided Subsequently, for anthropology a whole into four main sections. The first section looks series of new intriguing questions have arisen. at the origins of these pervasive ‘silicon utopias’. Technology itself is increasingly displayed as It explores the imaginations and concepts ‘culture’ in its own right, not only as enabling, related to the ‘digital age’ in art, academia and improving or assisting culture (Harvey 1996: in the first ethnographic accounts of computer 121–123). New exotic communities emerge, technology communities published at the turn such as digital natives, hackers, freaks, techies, of the century. The second section analyses nerds, gamers or geeks (Tocci 2009) and online the political economy of the recent restyling communities seem to question place-based of Manchester as a digital-technological city. ethnography (Whitehead and Wesch 2012). In the third section, I present the case of a Among the origins of fantasies of the specific development project supported by the digital or information age was the work of central government and articulated by local Marshall McLuhan.2 The Medium is the Message leaders of the tech-community. The final section (2008 [1967]), a book at the intersections of relates this case study to concepts such as the philosophy, cultural studies and pop-art, includes entrepreneurial dream. An anthropologically some of his most popular ideas. Communication informed notion of cynicism, I suggest in the technology is shaping the mentality of societies conclusions, can contribute to a balanced as we move towards a world of total involvement, evaluation of the contemporary ideology of the global village, one of the popular terms he technological entrepreneurialism beyond has coined. ‘Electric circuitry is recreating in the utopias of practitioners and dystopias of us the multi-dimensional space orientation of academics. the “primitive”’; it ‘confers a mythic dimension on our ordinary individual and group actions’ Utopias AND and it is ‘orientalizing the west’ (McLuhan and ethnographies Fiore 1967: 57, 114, 145). Today McLuhan- OF technologically influenced scholars relate this ‘new tribalism’ saturateD communities to internet communities (Stille 2000) and anthropologists have referred to McLuhan’s The apparently ever-growing importance of ‘global village’ as part of the history of the information and communication technology globalization concept (Eriksen 2007: 2). In in everyday life shapes contemporary addition, there have been recent anthropological suomen antropologi | volume 42 issue 1 spring 2017 92 Richard Pfeilstetter narratives similar to McLuhan’s, in form ‘more journalistic’ (2002: 9). Both Borsook`s (presented as philosophic artwork), popularity self-titled ‘gonzo anthropology’ (2001: 3) and (reaching out to a wide general public) and English-Lueck’s in-depth ethnography were content (technology is changing our mentality). innovative for their time, considering that Michael Wesch, professor of anthropology, Google, founded in 1998 and moving to Palo is author of the artistic video collage, ‘The Alto in 1999, was not even mentioned yet by Machine is Us/ing Us’, arguing that the internet English-Lueck. Both looked at the cultural leads to more sharing, trading, collaboration and consequences of the new computer technology is reconfiguring identities and self-perceptions. not only for consumers, but for their producers, It was the most popular video on the Web in studying, through participant observation, the October 2007 and up to 2015 it had been local particularities of a community shaped viewed over eleven million times. The prophetic by ‘technological saturation’ (English-Lueck nature of these accounts has similar correlates in 2002). Borsook created a powerful dystopia corporate narratives of revolutionary products, of Northern California’s ‘technolibertarian’ such as the iPad (everything changes with iPad), community which she, fifteen years after her Skype (keeps the world talking) or Facebook publication, describes in a contribution for the (it’s free and always will be). Of course, the blog of the Institute of Network Cultures of the very nature of utopias is that they are entangled Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences as with dystopias. ‘Don’t be evil,’ was Google’s ‘so.much.worse.now’: much discussed corporate slogan until recently, while the first Macintosh commercial in 1984 Silicon Valley is both (as has always been played with Orwell’s dystopian novel, ‘Nineteen the case) in bed with and in opposition to Eighty-Four’. government. The language of ‘disruption’ At the turn of the century two books, by and ‘sharing economy’ seems more about Paulina Borsook (2000) and Jan English- avoiding taxes, licenses, and corporate Lueck (2002) respectively, were published on liability than ‘sharing’ anything (i.e. deeply the cultural particularities of a community that technolibertarian)—but then the terms was seen as the showcase of the ‘information Friend ™ and Like ™ have also taken on revolution’ and the ‘emerging global culture’ strange new meanings. (2015) (English-Lueck 2002: 8). They analyzed the values and worldviews of the Silicon Valley The ethos that English-Lueck identifies in the tech or startup community, a group structured Bay Area of the 1990s is similar, but the more by the symbolic and economic power of the cultural-relativistic style of the monograph cutting edge technology they themselves did not allow for such accentuated political created.3 Both authors knew about each other positioning. Instrumental reasoning prevailed while writing their books. Borsook depicted a (life is managed), ‘the production of technology telephone conversation with English-Lueck [was] a moral mission’ (technoptimism) and as amusing, because ‘to these anthropologists, people lived for their work as they felt joy what I was describing was the religion of and passion for technology or ‘technolust’ their native informants’ (2001: 4–5). Inversely, (2002: 34–35, 42, 51, 95, 174). In 2015, these English-Lueck referred to Borsook’s work in a descriptions feel mundane and familiar as footnote, misspelling her name as Barsook, as our everyday experience is intimately