![]() If we consider Facebook in this way, we may be better equipped to enact appropriate reform for the company and refrain from demonizing its founder. Travais Kalanick was ousted from Uber despite being the CEO and majority founder, because “sometimes a supermind’s goals can even be different from those of its most powerful members”(137). ![]() Malone mentions Uber as a relevant example. To Zuckerberg, Facebook might have transformed from a hierarchy he controls into a community and/or market that is so large and so fundamental that it is not his place to moderate content or to enforce his personal ethics upon the platform. The frustration that Zuckerberg isn’t changing Facebook enough might be misplaced, since superminds “do have lives of their own, beyond the individuals in them”(12). Zuckerberg did create Facebook, perhaps as a “hierarchy” supermind, but I believe Malone would argue that Facebook only exists because of the thousands of workers, billions of users, and handful of governments that interact with the company. In many ways, we may have fallen into the trap of the “great man” theory. One question our class has struggled with is the culpability and responsibility of Zuckerberg. I’d like to extend Malone’s theory of the supermind to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. The result is an inflated cultural value for the individual (think of our fascination with child prodigies) instead of systems of people, or superminds. ![]() The “great man” myth says that individuals, from Caesar to Rockefeller to Jobs (7), are responsible for major events and ideas in human history. Malone writes in the preface that human history has largely been shaped by superminds that “accomplished things that individual humans could never have done alone.” I believe this perspective is much needed pushback against the “great man” theory that is ingrained in our culture. ![]()
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