In his book The Internet Is Not The Answer (Atlantic Books, 2015), Andrew Keen says that Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google, and the company’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have six planes at their disposal. One of them, strangely enough, is a light attack aircraft. They even have their own airport in Silicon Valley and their fuel is subsidised by Nasa.

It’s almost as if they’re ready to scramble and flee at a moment’s notice, leaving humanity to deal with whatever end-of-the-world situation crashes and burns on the horizon.

That’s not all. Keen says that Google is planning a walled city in San Francisco where Google employees will be able to work and play without meeting other people. Such secessionist fantasies are common in the high-tech inner circle. Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, wants to create state-free islands in the Pacific. Tesla Motors co-founder Elon Musk is planning an 80,000-strong colony on Mars. And in 2003, Stanford University professor and entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan called for Silicon Valley to secede from the US.

Now in essence, there’s nothing wrong with nursing dreams of escaping far from the madding, tweeting crowd. I do it every time a meeting ticks beyond the 25-minute mark. The strange thing, however, is that these people made their fortune from that great collective enterprise: the internet. They sold us the dream that the internet will be the earthquake that will shake the tectonic plates and bring all continents together in one global village. We would be connected to everyone in one great democratic movement and live almost happily ever after.

We bought that dream. And in turn, we made these people rich. Because, just in case you haven’t realised, we all work for Google, Facebook et al. Every time we click, we add information to their databases, which in turn adds value to their advertising. There’s just one little nag: we don’t get paid for it.

But then, do you blame them for wanting to make the great escape? I don’t. Just log on to Facebook and in five minutes, you’ll be mouse-scrambling for the log off button. And that’s because something that in principle should bring us together is actually a negativity accelerator.

I dare you to find something positive on Facebook. If you do manage, just wait a couple of minutes and someone will spike it with a negative comment. Prejudice, malice and hostility are the currencies in which social media trades. And shame, of course. Because that’s what we do: hunt for embarrassing photos, incorrect syntax and any opinion which differs from ours and do our best to shame the owner.

It almost makes you want to retreat to your own stateless island where there is no WiFi signal.

techeditor@timesofmalta.com