Do we really need more jeremiads exposing the Randian greed of Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg & Travis Kalanick? Rob Lalka’s THE VENTURE ALCHEMISTS is about how big tech turned profits into power. but this has been the alchemy of American economic life for two hundred years. What isn’t clear to me is how we are supposed to distinguish good big tech guys like Bill Gates, Pierre Omidyar, Craig Newmark, & Reid Hoffman from the evil Peter Thiel, Travis Kalanick and Elon Musk. Lalka’s fetishization of “ordinary people” might be well meaning, but it doesn’t really address today’s alchemic challenge of democratizing the economic benefits of technological innovation.
Rob Lalka is Professor of Practice in Management and the Albert R. Lepage Professor in Business at Tulane University’s A.B. Freeman School of Business and the Executive Director of the Albert Lepage Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. He has twice received the A.B. Freeman School’s Excellence in Intellectual Contributions Award and is the author of a forthcoming book, The Venture Alchemists: How Big Tech Turned Profits Into Power, from Columbia University Press. Lalka moved to New Orleans from Washington, DC, where he was a director at Village Capital and a senior advisor at the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. Prior, he served in the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Global Partnerships and was on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff, for which he was recognized with the State Department’s Superior Honor Award and its Meritorious Honor Award. Lalka currently serves on the boards of Public Democracy, Inc., Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana, and Venture For America in New Orleans. He graduated from Yale University, cum laude with distinction in both history and English, holds his master’s degree in public policy from Duke University, and earned executive education certificates from Harvard Business School.
Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children
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