Turning Deprivation Into Vision: Edward Low and Mark Zuckerberg

A composite image of Edward Low, a byword for the ruthless pirate, and his crew torturing a captive strung up from the mast. Source: Wikipedia How cruel can a pirate be? In 1722, a Portuguese merchant ship was seized by pirates off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada. Enraged that the crew had thrown its treasure into the sea, the pirates cut off the captain's lips, roasted them over a fire and forced him to eat them. After capturing a British merchant ship in the Caribbean, they locked their prisoners below deck and set the vessel ablaze, burning them all alive to destroy the evidence. To spread terror, they tied captives to the mast and whipped them, then cut off their noses, ears and thumbs and threw them into the sea, or drowned them outright. Even Edward Low, known as the Bloodthirsty Pirate, had a painful story of his own. Born into desperate poverty, his entire family survived by pickpocketing, theft and robbery. He crossed to America and briefly lived an honest life, but when his wife died in childbirth in 1721, he turned on the world and took up piracy. He longed for the rest of his life for the two-year-old daughter he had left with his wife's family. Perhaps, for all his cruelty, he felt sympathy for those in circumstances like his own: he treated female captives and newly married men with relative leniency. Edward Low threatening someone at gunpoint to force him to drink. Source: Wikipedia Sheer terror is itself a weapon. Low, schooled in pickpocketing and robbery, would already have known how to force a surrender without a fight. He typically sailed in groups of three or four ships, flying false flags and disguising his vessels as ordinary merchant ships to close in on likely prey. Then he would raise a pirate flag bearing a red skeleton on a black field to intimidate his target into surrender. In less than three years, Low plundered and burned more than 100 ships. His piracy was so vicious that even his own crew grew sick of it. He was "a maniac and a brute," they said. After a defeat at the hands of the British navy in 1723 sent Low into a frenzy of revenge, pirates weary of the pointless torture and killing began to desert him. The following year brought only rumors that a group had stolen a ship and slipped away; there is no record of Low's movements after that. The New York Times, writing in 1892, described him as a torturer as ingenious and cruel as any in the Spanish Inquisition of the Dark Ages. Deprivation breeds obsession. Two men who spent their youth cut off from the world ran to opposite extremes. Edward Low sought to rule the seas through brutal piracy; Mark Zuckerberg of Meta wanted to command the cyber world through algorithms. Zuckerberg was so introverted as a child that he could not join his friends' conversations, answering in clipped words, and was later said by the public to "come across as robotic." Where Low made his name with skilled pickpocketing and robbery, Zuckerberg threw himself at computers. Unable even to figure out how to play with his younger sister, he learned to program at 11 — because, he has said, he wanted to build something he could play with her. At Harvard, he showed exceptional talent for connecting his dormitory friends through algorithms. That became Facebook. Having expanded a roster of face photos into a social network linking everyone in the world, he now wants to build an empire, Meta, that connects all information. Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg. Source: Wikipedia The algorithm of connection crosses ethical lines easily. That is hacking. Building Facemash, Zuckerberg broke through security without hesitation and posted the material without consent. He stole the idea from a project commissioned by the Winklevoss twins and built Facebook. He pushed out co-founder Eduardo Saverin. Instagram, WhatsApp and Snapchat were all captured — acquired — through thoroughly piratical coercion. His surveillance and pressure on employees, likened to the Eye of Sauron, gave rise to the term "Zucc," short for "Zucked," meaning to be done in. Low turned his deprivation into hatred; Zuckerberg coded his into a vision. He sublimated a desperate obsession with connection into a mission. After founding the company, he wrote "Move fast and break things" on the wall and openly laid out "The Hacker Way" to shareholders. He wanted to go beyond mere connection: "Our mission is not just to connect the world, but to bring the world closer together."