Berkeley Journal of Sociology

A look at jobs and technological change in the 19th and 21st centuries — and how automation can intensify the use of human labor.

Because the history of Silicon Valley is so recent and its social implications so broad, social scientists have been slow to establish its empirical significance as an object for inquiry. We pry open, for critical analysis, the Pandora’s box of social forces contained in our smartphones, apps, and tablets.

Eric Giannella recently argued in the BJS that Silicon Valley’s faith in progress has led to an ‘amorality problem’: We are being sold an overly simplistic world of rational progress. But a more fundamental issue is at stake: we don’t know what we are being sold at all.

Silicon Valley’s amorality problem arises from the blind faith many place in progress. The narrative of progress provides moral cover to the tech industry and lulls people into thinking they no longer need to exercise moral judgment.