Evgeny Morozov:

Nicholas Carr's oeuvre is representative of contemporary technology criticism both in the questions that it asks and the issues it avoids. Thus, there's the trademark preoccupation with design problems, and their usually easy solutions, but hardly a word on just why it is that startups founded on the most ridiculous ideas have such an easy time attracting venture capital. That this might have something to do with profound structural transformations in the American economy -- e.g., its ever-expanding financialization -- is not a conclusion that today's technology criticism could ever reach.

David Remnick:

Kleptocracies rarely value theoretical tracts. They value numbered accounts. They value the stability of their own arrangements.

Danny Sullivan:

Someone getting a lot of VC investment isn't a sign they're successful at anything other than getting VC funding.

Eric Giannella:

Most investors would rather not see their firms get mired in the fraught issue of defining what is morally better according to various groups; they prefer objective benefits, measured via return on investment (ROI) or other metrics. Yet, the fact that business goals and cultural sentiments go hand in hand so well ought to give us pause.

Everyone can, at a minimum, ask whether they are doing more harm than good. The trouble in Silicon Valley is that many talented, highly educated young people seem relatively unconcerned with the potential for harm. To be more aware of not harming people, much less helping them, we need to cultivate moral intuitions by discussing the consequences of our work for specific people.

Penelope Trunk:

You should always negotiate a way to buy each other out if you start hating your co-founder. But at the beginning of a startup you are so enamored that you cannot imagine what you will want to do ... when your electricity is cut off.