'Silicon Valley, disruption, and the end of uncertainty' by Susi Geiger in (2020) 13(2) Journal of Cultural Economy 169-184 states
This paper reflects on the relationship between high-tech disruption narratives and uncertainty. My main argument is that an economic sociology of the future is incomplete without addressing the ‘demonic’ or rather eschatological elements apparent in the promissory twin rhetoric of disruption and inevitability that a number of contemporary technology firms employ. The conjuring up of liberatory high-tech futures implicates a political-philosophical perspective of the end game. It utilizes at once the productive power of uncertainty to create visions of ‘absolute riches’ and societal gain but at the same time narrows these futures down to one inevitable alternative to the status quo. Through the examples of two Silicon Valley disruptor firms, I argue that these eschatological narratives need to be opened to social scientific critique in order to examine their potential societal consequences above and beyond the narrow geographic confines of ‘the Valley.’
Geiger comments
The historian of economics and science Philip Mirowski once said, when talking about the 2008 Recession, that ‘In the neoliberal land of make-believe, if you can sell it, then it must a fortiori be legitimate’ (Mirowski 2012, p. 290). Indeed, the relationship between fictionality and the economy has been subject to much scrutiny in recent years (e.g. Esposito 2013, 2015, Beckert 2016, Geiger and Finch 2016, Meyers and van Hoyweghen 2018). This literature has, by and large, argued that economic expectations, as projections made under conditions of uncertainty, are necessarily fictional – they have a ‘broken relationship to reality’ (Beckert 2016, p. 62). Where fictional expectations around future markets or technologies are circulated, these expectations act as cognitive reference points for stakeholders to buy-into the fiction over time (Brown 2003). These expectations can be strongly affectively laden – they can be taken over by ‘irrational exuberance’ (Shiller 2000, Geiger and Gross 2017). But do expectation-based theories account for the ‘demonic’ undertones that have been diagnosed in the discourses of disruption found in contemporary technology circles (Beckert 2016, p. 285)?
In this paper, I examine the political-philosophical and quasi-religious colourings of contemporary high-tech disruption narratives, as circulated and perpetuated by many Silicon Valley-type (bio)-technology firms. Where Hogarth (2017) sees these firms suspended in a liminal space between the ‘regime of hope’ and the ‘regime of truth,’ I argue that their disruption narratives work as political technologies, conjuring up a ‘theological unconscious’ (Muniesa 2017), where futures are envisaged as liberatory and essentially faith-based alternatives to the current status quo. Recent works in the sociology of expectations see capitalist futures as multiple and entrepreneurs productively utilizing this multiplicity (Esposito 2013, 2018). In my reading of high-tech disruption narratives, this multiplicity is often paradoxically combined with a narrowing down of all potential futures to one. This political or philosophical techno-vision is elevated to be the only possible alternative to the status quo; it signals the necessary destruction of the old and the creation of a world that clearly parts with whatever has preceded it. In other words, I propose that through advocating ‘the end of uncer- tainty’ disruption narratives gain an eschatological character.
In its secular usage eschatology signals both the fulfilment of time and the opening up of a new and better future (Pannenberg 2008, Loureiro 2010). In contrast to an expectation-driven rendering of economic futures, eschatologies of disruption thus start with an end state and work backwards, using a metaphorical future perfect rather than the ‘future present’ (Esposito 2018) of imaginaries and expectations: future worlds are wished into existence in a quasi-messianic manner.
I investigate this proposition by tracing the evolution and narratives of two organizations that, like many other Silicon Valley-type firms, have played heavily on a future-oriented disruptor narrative: the consumer genomics testing firm 23andMe and the blood-testing firm Theranos. My investigation of these two firms’ narratives is based on extensive secondary data and complemented with broader insights from an ethnographic study in the Silicon Valley digital health ecosystem. I empha- size that I am not drawing any factual parallels between Theranos’ alleged fraudulent behaviour and a firm – 23andMe – that operates in the regulatory sunlight. My interest rather revolves around the political-philosophical narratives which these firms build and the effects these may have in conjuring up future markets-to-be. Overall, then, this paper reflects on the relationship between expectations, uncertainty, and high-tech eschatologies that the omnipresent concept of disruption creates.
