Even a well-told story won’t save Big Tech from the cold hard stare of global attention
On December 30th, the historian Timothy Snyder published a review of unimprovable snideness in the New York Times. His victim was an American academic, Jonathan Gottschall, whose new book, “The Story Paradox”, examines the role of stories in society.
In his book, Gottschall argues that the “science” of storytelling has been understudied and its power to control our lives is not understood.
As Snyder’s withering review illustrates, the former is an understatement and the latter an overstatement.
There is little doubt that stories shape our understanding of the world. The academic literature is littered with studies that show that narratives ease our understanding of an idea, making it easier for us to accept it.
A weak argument is stronger when wrapped in an engaging story. A cursory examination of the world around us provides plenty of examples.
Take Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of Theranos and now a convicted fraudster. Holmes persuaded intelligent investors to part with millions of dollars because her story about her business – a disruptive new technology – and about herself – the next Steve Jobs – was so engaging.
Where Gottschall is wrong, however, was that stories cannot overcome facts forever. We are not slaves to a story once it becomes clear that it is untrue.
In 2019, two academics at Northwestern University wrote a paper called “Strategic Storytelling” which examined when “narratives help versus hurt the persuasive power of facts.” The researchers discovered that when the facts are obviously piled up in favour of an argument, it is more persuasive to simply present those facts than to work them into a narrative. There are moments, in short, when facts do speak for themselves.
Once again, the Theranos example is instructive. Once facts were able to break free from the non-disclosure agreements that Holmes bound her employees with, her story became untenable.
What Holmes discovered in the extreme, the rest of Silicon Valley must soon reckon with. The giants of the technology industry have, for a long time, been propelled by the power of a good story.
The founder’s story is a staple of the form, pitting a protagonist, usually a college dropout in somebody’s garage, against the forces of complacent corporatism. So too the story of technology as our saviour, allowing humanity to achieve the previously unthinkable.
Each of these stories persuaded, at least in part, because they had the facts on their side. The founders of the Big Tech firms did indeed achieve extraordinary things. Their platforms have changed our world, in many ways for the better.
But the facts are now starting to stack up on the other side too. The cost of all this disruption is being paid by society. The benefits have accrued, disproportionately, to the groaning bank balances of these companies.
The instinct in Silicon Valley may be to tell a better story. Facebook’s attempt to divert our attention to the so-called metaverse, by renaming itself Meta Platforms, is one such example. In the world according to Gottschall, such sleight of hand might just work.
But, in reality, the facts have already come crashing in. At this stage, the only thing likely to change our minds will be an abundance of facts that things are getting better: that the behaviour of the Silicon Valley firms is not uncompetitive, that the impact of their businesses on society is positive, that the firms live up to Google’s old, but then abandoned credo, “do no evil”.
Tech firms undoubtedly want to change the story. To do so, they will have to first change the reality.