>Second, treating the world as a software project gives us a rationale for being selfish. The old adage has it that if you are given ten minutes to cut down a t

>Second, treating the world as a software project gives us a rationale for being selfish. The old adage has it that if you are given ten minutes to cut down a tree, you should spend the first five sharpening your axe. We are used to the idea of bootstrapping ourselves into a position of maximum leverage before tackling a problem. >In the real world, this has led to a pathology where the tech sector maximizes its own comfort. You don't have to go far to see this. Hop on BART after the conference and take a look at Oakland, or take a stroll through downtown San Francisco and try to persuade yourself you're in the heart of a boom that has lasted for forty years. You'll see a residential theme park for tech workers, surrounded by areas of poverty and misery that have seen no benefit and ample harm from our presence. We pretend that by maximizing our convenience and productivity, we're hastening the day when we finally make life better for all those other people. This wasn't programmers' fault. It wasn't robots. It wasn't automation. It wasn't the fault of boomers. It wasn't the fault of millenials. It wasn't the fault of "us" in any sense. It was the fault of the same American oligarchy who conspired to suppress American wages across the country, including those of programmers: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/03/google-apple-tech-titans-wage-suppression-conspiracy-estimated-cover-one-million-workers.html http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/03/google-apple-tech-tit...