Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on May 25, 2021
Recent novels are targeting big tech, often with good reason. We Are Watching Eliza Bright explored misogyny in the male-dominated tech industry. Version Zero takes a broader, less focused shot at the supposed evils of tech businesses. Unfortunately, the plot becomes too scattered to score a direct hit on the target.
The story begins with a well-defined evil. Max Portillo, an American of Salvadoran parents, works for a social media company called Wren that is a thinly disguised Facebook. His creative approach to problem solving gets him invited to participate in a high-level working group, where he learns that the company has a plan to acquire even more information about its users and to sell that information to the CIA, the Russian government, and any other buyer that can pony up billions of dollars. Max makes a naïve but well-intentioned effort to bring his ethical objections to the attention of the CEO and is fired for his trouble. Not only fired, but his career is destroyed to send a message about defying a powerful employer.
Max’s best female friend, Akiko Hosokawa, still works for Wren. She helps Max conduct a bit of sabotage that drives users to close their Wren accounts, but only temporarily because who can live without Facebook? So Max conducts a slightly more effective bit of sabotage using a group called Version Zero. The group initially consists of Max and Akiko and Max’s best male friend, Shane Sataw, who is also Akiko’s boyfriend. Shane is a decent guy who cleans pools for a living and doesn’t know or care much about the tech world. He exemplifies one of the novel’s themes — it is possible to live a satisfying life without the artificial ego strokes that come from getting “likes” on the meaningless social media posts that distract us from a world we can’t see because our eyes on glued to our smartphone screens. That’s a more amorphous harm than the novel’s initial complaint — the loss of privacy that occurs when big tech justifies stealing our data by pointing out that the fine print in user agreements pobody ever reads allows them to do whatever they want — but it’s still a valid concern.
Version Zero’s antics come to the attention of Pilot Markham, a wealthy tech innovator who dropped out of public view three years earlier after his daughter died. Pilot blames internet trolling for his daughter’s death. He also blames himself and the internet’s enablers. Pilot befriends (or manipulates) Max, Akiko, Shane, and his 18-year-old neighbor, Turpinseed Brayden. Brayden’s voice represents the average young internet user who feels validated by the feedback he gets from friends on social media posts. Brayden isn’t overly bright but he’s harmless and fundamentally decent.
The novel’s plot follows Max and his gang as they conspire with Pilot to wake up the world to the perceived damage caused by the internet. One of their better schemes involves doxing trolls, exposing the real identities of white supremacists and misogynists who use the comfort of anonymity to post vile screeds about Jews or blacks or women or Asians or immigrants or whomever they happen to be hating today.
The story eventually brings in four other CEOs from companies that might be the equivalent of Microsoft, Amazon, Uber, and Reddit. At that point, the targeted evil is simply corporate greed and the elevation of profit over consumers, as exemplified by Uber’s business development model (move in fast, ignore all laws, and put out the fires after you’re too big to stop). While greed is another valid target, it is hardly limited to the tech industry. Consumer harm linked to corporate greed is considerably greater in the pharmaceutical and petrochemical industries, to name only a couple of obvious examples.
The plot moves quickly. It is sufficiently strange and unpredictable to deliver solid entertainment. The story adds human interest by developing a potential love triangle involving Max, Akiko, and Shane that challenges Max’s perception of himself as a decent person.
Still, I’m not quite sure what message David Yoon means Version Zero to send. After condemining big tech with a broad brush, the message seems to come down to “internet bad.” The internet itself is just a tool, not an evil entity. The novel acknowledges that marginalized people depend on the internet for support. Organizations that do everything from cancer research to animal rescue rely on the internet for fundraising. Some of us have been liberated by the internet. I have the freedom to live wherever I want (within financial reason) because of the internet. Without it, I’d probably be a Walmart greeter. And while I could keep this blog as a handwritten journal in a moleskin notebook without posting my ramblings for the world to ignore, I don’t think the blog unleashes any particular evil in the world. Heck, I don’t even bother readers with ads, as do some of the amusing blog entries imagined in Version Zero.
But partial disagreement with (or uncertainty about) a book’s message isn’t enough reason to dislike a provocative book unless the message itself is evil. Yoon’s indictment of big tech is well intentioned. The book is likely intended to make people think about social harms that tech businesses cause. Thinking is never a bad thing. Yoon plays fair by acknowledging counterarguments to the anti-tech message and by suggesting that the balance of benefits and harms does not weigh entirely on the side of harms. Putting aside the novel’s lack of a clear focus, I enjoyed the characters and the surprising (if sometimes absurdist) plot twists. Those are sufficient reasons to recommend a provacative book even if I'm not entirely sold on the provocation.
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