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This was written so disrespectfully and dismissively of programmers, hackers and engineers that I have a hard time reading it, despite my extreme distaste for F

This was written so disrespectfully and dismissively of programmers, hackers and engineers that I have a hard time reading it, despite my extreme distaste for Facebook. >In the labs of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) during the 60s and 70s, they broke any rule that interfered with building the stuff of early computing, such marvels as the first video games and word processors. Also, Calling a 33 year old billionaire that has helmed the construction of one of the largest companies the world has ever seen a (paraphrasing) 'good boy that wanted to be a bit naughty' is just stupid. I understand why Foer did it - he hates Silicon Valley for ruining his life at the helm of a magazine formerly supported by more hands-off rich patrons. It makes his arguments worse, though.

golemotron 9y ago
Get used to it. The tech backlash is just beginning. There are two forces. One is the series of gaffs by Google, FB, and Amazon and the resultant public awareness of their power. The second is Trump's election. When he set up his initial meetings with business leaders at the beginning of his administration, the tech giants were notably not invited. He sent the signal that they were not part of the real economy. Say what you want about Trump's morals or ineffectiveness, but things like that send signals across a society whether we like it or not. "Greed is good" came from Reagan's election in the 80s. Tech is losing its shine in our culture.
- altcognito 9y ago
  > When he set up his initial meetings with business leaders at the beginning of his administration, the tech giants were notably not invited. http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/14/technology/trump-tech-summit-silicon-valley/index.html?iid=EL http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/14/technology/trump-tech-summit...
- mcintyre1994 9y ago
  > When he set up his initial meetings with business leaders at the beginning of his administration, the tech giants were notably not invited. Hmm? https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/14/donald-trump-meets-with-tech-leaders/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/14/donald-trump-meets-with-te... "President-elect Donald Trump met with some of the most prominent executives from the tech industry today at Trump Tower, with investor Peter Thiel and Vice President-elect Mike Pence at his side. Trump opened the meeting with CEOs from Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and others by thanking Thiel for his support." "Attendees included Eric Schmidt and Larry Page of Google, Tim Cook of Apple, Satya Nadella and Brad Smith of Microsoft, Jeff Bezos of Amazon (who expressed his excitement that Trump’s administration could be “the innovations administration“), Safra Catz of Oracle, Chuck Robbins of Cisco and Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook. Thiel’s business partner, Palantir CEO Alex Karp, attended as well." Seems like different sectors just had different meetings? Which meeting specifically were you thinking of?
  - golemotron 9y ago
    This one. It was the first one as president. http://www.businessinsider.com/business-leaders-trump-white-house-meeting-2017-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/business-leaders-trump-white-...
- FilterSweep 9y ago
  http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/01/investing/apple-cash-overseas/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/01/investing/apple-cash-oversea... Your supreme leader will find it difficult forcibly seizing the hundreds of billions of dollars from the current biggest drivers of the economy to get them out of "his" economy.
pjc50 9y ago
>>In the labs of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) during the 60s and 70s, they broke any rule that interfered with building the stuff of early computing, such marvels as the first video games and word processors. Surely this is part of tech's own, positive, legend of itself? Is it "disrespectful" when it's part of HAKMEM or the Jargon file? Isn't this where all the "disruption" ideology comes from?
- ameister14 9y ago
  In context, it doesn't appear that he actually believes the first video games, for example, to be a marvel - he's deliberately describing the programmers at MIT in a way to make them seem childish and naive. This makes his point that Zuckerberg is both childish and exploitative an easier one to support.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    Immediately preceding sentence: "The heroes of his adolescence were the original hackers. These weren’t malevolent data thieves or cyberterrorists. Zuckerberg’s hacker heroes were disrespectful of authority. They were technically virtuosic, infinitely resourceful nerd cowboys, unbound by conventional thinking." I think you're reading a sarcasm into it that I'm not seeing? > "Plenty of companies have similarly appropriated hacker culture – hackers are the ur-disrupters – but none have gone as far as Facebook." I think it's actually painting Zuckerberg as a "wannabe" and in some way not a real hacker?
    - ameister14 9y ago
      >I think you're reading a sarcasm into it that I'm not seeing? It's possible - I've also read his book and some other work of his. He's a very good writer, though, so if it's there, it's almost certainly intentional. If you follow that paragraph, 'With their free time, they played epic pranks, which happened to draw further attention to their own cleverness – ' is then followed up by Foer's description of them as the enemy of suited bureaucracy. It makes you imagine young people going against a paternal figure, but the examples he chooses both cut their credibility and show that their fight was ultimately useless. It also provides better juxtaposition for his ultimate point about Zuckerberg's perversion of the hacker ethos. You're right, he is painting Zuckerberg as a wannabe. A boy who wants to emulate naive heroes but doesn't have the 'technical virtuosity' and ends up exploiting the culture he's almost but not quite a part of, turning it from something fairly harmless into something that Foer believes is extremely dangerous for society.
lin_lin 9y ago
> This was written so disrespectfully and dismissively of programmers, hackers and engineers that I have a hard time reading it, despite my extreme distaste for Facebook. It's the Guardian, that's pretty much to be expected.
ihuman 9y ago
I am out of the loop. How did Silicon Valley ruin his life?
- goialoq 9y ago
  Here's his side of the story: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/when-silicon-valley-took-over-journalism/534195/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/when-si...
awarer 9y ago
Yeah, he couldn't, for whatever reason, bring up advertisers but instead chose "those early hackers" pushed for this.
crpatino 9y ago
> This was written so disrespectfully and dismissively of programmers, hackers and engineers that I have a hard time reading I did not read anything there that was openly hostile to us. Critic of unintended consequences, yes; but that reflects more on our collective disregard for such than on then author's biases. If you had a hard time reading through it, that reflects positivelly on your character: It means you are not a self-serving cynic yet. The question is how to channel that emotional energy into making our profession one that serves the public as it claims to be, instead of preying on the public as more often than not we end up being.
- interstitial 9y ago
  If you want hostile, read "The Inmates are Running the Asylum"
andrei_says_ 9y ago
Ascribing ulterior motives to the author and thus constructing a straw man argument makes it difficult for me to take your comment at face value.
- ameister14 9y ago
  That's not an example of a straw man argument. I'll clarify, for the downvoters: I don't think the statement I made is an example of any common fallacy, but it is definitely not a straw man. If I were to say that he was arguing something he was not and then attacked that argument, or if I used him as a representation of all people making his arguments that would be a straw man. Maybe you could argue that it is ad hominem, but I'm not really attacking his character, merely his choice of words.
  - andrei_says_ 9y ago
    I, too, like precision. You are attacking him, by projecting your opinion of his motivations for writing the article, imaginary motivations rooted in "his" dislike for an industry. Ascribing motivations to someone else I associate with straw man fallacy. And, you're correct -- attacking him for these instead of addressing his arguments can be defined as ad hominem.
    - ameister14 9y ago
      >You are attacking him, by projecting your opinion of his motivations for writing the article, imaginary motivations rooted in "his" dislike for an industry. They aren't actually imaginary - this article is right in line with his book, which he wrote after being fired by one of the founders of Facebook. He's written and spoken quite extensively on this. Further, I didn't say those were his motivations for writing the article. I said that those were his motivations for writing it in the manner that he did. >Ascribing motivations to someone else I associate with straw man fallacy. That isn't what a straw man is, though. As for ad hominem - I'm not actually attacking him, I'm taking issue with the way he wrote the article and is characterizing a 33 year old man that has achieved immense and improbable success, married and with children as a 'good boy.'

golemotron 9y ago

Get used to it. The tech backlash is just beginning. There are two forces. One is the series of gaffs by Google, FB, and Amazon and the resultant public awareness of their power. The second is Trump's election. When he set up his initial meetings with business leaders at the beginning of his administration, the tech giants were notably not invited. He sent the signal that they were not part of the real economy. Say what you want about Trump's morals or ineffectiveness, but things like that send signals across a society whether we like it or not. "Greed is good" came from Reagan's election in the 80s. Tech is losing its shine in our culture.

altcognito 9y ago
> When he set up his initial meetings with business leaders at the beginning of his administration, the tech giants were notably not invited. http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/14/technology/trump-tech-summit-silicon-valley/index.html?iid=EL http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/14/technology/trump-tech-summit...
mcintyre1994 9y ago
> When he set up his initial meetings with business leaders at the beginning of his administration, the tech giants were notably not invited. Hmm? https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/14/donald-trump-meets-with-tech-leaders/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/14/donald-trump-meets-with-te... "President-elect Donald Trump met with some of the most prominent executives from the tech industry today at Trump Tower, with investor Peter Thiel and Vice President-elect Mike Pence at his side. Trump opened the meeting with CEOs from Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and others by thanking Thiel for his support." "Attendees included Eric Schmidt and Larry Page of Google, Tim Cook of Apple, Satya Nadella and Brad Smith of Microsoft, Jeff Bezos of Amazon (who expressed his excitement that Trump’s administration could be “the innovations administration“), Safra Catz of Oracle, Chuck Robbins of Cisco and Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook. Thiel’s business partner, Palantir CEO Alex Karp, attended as well." Seems like different sectors just had different meetings? Which meeting specifically were you thinking of?
- golemotron 9y ago
  This one. It was the first one as president. http://www.businessinsider.com/business-leaders-trump-white-house-meeting-2017-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/business-leaders-trump-white-...
FilterSweep 9y ago
http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/01/investing/apple-cash-overseas/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/01/investing/apple-cash-oversea... Your supreme leader will find it difficult forcibly seizing the hundreds of billions of dollars from the current biggest drivers of the economy to get them out of "his" economy.

pjc50 9y ago

>>In the labs of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) during the 60s and 70s, they broke any rule that interfered with building the stuff of early computing, such marvels as the first video games and word processors. Surely this is part of tech's own, positive, legend of itself? Is it "disrespectful" when it's part of HAKMEM or the Jargon file? Isn't this where all the "disruption" ideology comes from?

ameister14 9y ago
In context, it doesn't appear that he actually believes the first video games, for example, to be a marvel - he's deliberately describing the programmers at MIT in a way to make them seem childish and naive. This makes his point that Zuckerberg is both childish and exploitative an easier one to support.
- pjc50 9y ago
  Immediately preceding sentence: "The heroes of his adolescence were the original hackers. These weren’t malevolent data thieves or cyberterrorists. Zuckerberg’s hacker heroes were disrespectful of authority. They were technically virtuosic, infinitely resourceful nerd cowboys, unbound by conventional thinking." I think you're reading a sarcasm into it that I'm not seeing? > "Plenty of companies have similarly appropriated hacker culture – hackers are the ur-disrupters – but none have gone as far as Facebook." I think it's actually painting Zuckerberg as a "wannabe" and in some way not a real hacker?
  - ameister14 9y ago
    >I think you're reading a sarcasm into it that I'm not seeing? It's possible - I've also read his book and some other work of his. He's a very good writer, though, so if it's there, it's almost certainly intentional. If you follow that paragraph, 'With their free time, they played epic pranks, which happened to draw further attention to their own cleverness – ' is then followed up by Foer's description of them as the enemy of suited bureaucracy. It makes you imagine young people going against a paternal figure, but the examples he chooses both cut their credibility and show that their fight was ultimately useless. It also provides better juxtaposition for his ultimate point about Zuckerberg's perversion of the hacker ethos. You're right, he is painting Zuckerberg as a wannabe. A boy who wants to emulate naive heroes but doesn't have the 'technical virtuosity' and ends up exploiting the culture he's almost but not quite a part of, turning it from something fairly harmless into something that Foer believes is extremely dangerous for society.

lin_lin 9y ago

> This was written so disrespectfully and dismissively of programmers, hackers and engineers that I have a hard time reading it, despite my extreme distaste for Facebook. It's the Guardian, that's pretty much to be expected.

ihuman 9y ago

I am out of the loop. How did Silicon Valley ruin his life?

goialoq 9y ago
Here's his side of the story: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/when-silicon-valley-took-over-journalism/534195/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/when-si...

awarer 9y ago

Yeah, he couldn't, for whatever reason, bring up advertisers but instead chose "those early hackers" pushed for this.

crpatino 9y ago

> This was written so disrespectfully and dismissively of programmers, hackers and engineers that I have a hard time reading I did not read anything there that was openly hostile to us. Critic of unintended consequences, yes; but that reflects more on our collective disregard for such than on then author's biases. If you had a hard time reading through it, that reflects positivelly on your character: It means you are not a self-serving cynic yet. The question is how to channel that emotional energy into making our profession one that serves the public as it claims to be, instead of preying on the public as more often than not we end up being.

interstitial 9y ago
If you want hostile, read "The Inmates are Running the Asylum"

andrei_says_ 9y ago

Ascribing ulterior motives to the author and thus constructing a straw man argument makes it difficult for me to take your comment at face value.

ameister14 9y ago
That's not an example of a straw man argument. I'll clarify, for the downvoters: I don't think the statement I made is an example of any common fallacy, but it is definitely not a straw man. If I were to say that he was arguing something he was not and then attacked that argument, or if I used him as a representation of all people making his arguments that would be a straw man. Maybe you could argue that it is ad hominem, but I'm not really attacking his character, merely his choice of words.
- andrei_says_ 9y ago
  I, too, like precision. You are attacking him, by projecting your opinion of his motivations for writing the article, imaginary motivations rooted in "his" dislike for an industry. Ascribing motivations to someone else I associate with straw man fallacy. And, you're correct -- attacking him for these instead of addressing his arguments can be defined as ad hominem.
  - ameister14 9y ago
    >You are attacking him, by projecting your opinion of his motivations for writing the article, imaginary motivations rooted in "his" dislike for an industry. They aren't actually imaginary - this article is right in line with his book, which he wrote after being fired by one of the founders of Facebook. He's written and spoken quite extensively on this. Further, I didn't say those were his motivations for writing the article. I said that those were his motivations for writing it in the manner that he did. >Ascribing motivations to someone else I associate with straw man fallacy. That isn't what a straw man is, though. As for ad hominem - I'm not actually attacking him, I'm taking issue with the way he wrote the article and is characterizing a 33 year old man that has achieved immense and improbable success, married and with children as a 'good boy.'