*And he's got his reasons.
It would have been heresy twenty year ago, but that was then, this is now
(...)
- Do you agree with some observers that there is still an innovation crisis in Europe, and why isn't there a Silicon Valley in the continent?
- No, there is no innovation crisis in Europe, but innovation should be driven by social issues and not by financial gains. I think it is a good thing that there is no Silicon Valley in Europe because we have very different values. The Silicon Valley has demonstrated a very low sense of responsibility towards privacy and towards algorithmic sovereignty issues, which in Europe is unacceptable. Europe does not facilitate extractivism of data, of identities, of desires, of needs, of behaviour, and all sorts of data extraction that the Silicon Valley is doing around the world.
I think that in Europe there is a sense for innovation and there is enough EU funding for innovation from the programme Horizon 2020 and a lot of people benefited from it. There are big opportunities for more socially-driven agenda in this respect, but this is not the case on a large scale. I am advocating for social innovation rather than financial innovation and rather than just selling more gadgets to people. The model Silicon Valley brings is not sustainable from the environmental point of view, but also from a financial point of view. The way venture capital works often is by disrupting the sector, investing on lowering the prices and then entering as a monopolist. This is evident for many cases. I prefer a more socially invested development that respects market diversity and does not enter disruptive amounts of money to break ecosystems and establish oligopolies. Today most multinational corporations based in Silicon Valley are just establishing an oligopoly all over the world, a global oligopoly, governing over huge assets and value....
