6 ms·
It's starting to feel like we just built the Borg from Star Trek. Everything bigger, everything more centralized, everything more efficient and streamlined and
by noad 6y ago
It's starting to feel like we just built the Borg from Star Trek. Everything bigger, everything more centralized, everything more efficient and streamlined and outsource everything you're not good at. Economies of scale so massive you can argue they are just monopolies. Every new venture needs to scale to billions or it's not worthwhile. Some competition and innovation, but mostly just growth throw acquisition and assimilation.
Wasn't the Borg devastated by a virus?
TNG was such a good show.
- jachell 6y agoWho's "we"? Uber?
- twomoretime 6y agoSociety, I imagine
- wpietri 6y agoWe as in the audience here, I think. The tech industry.
- TallGuyShort 6y agoWe humans and our economies, I'd imagine. Because the problem isn't just Uber. It isn't even just tech. The fear of meat shortages is because we've condensed to very few, very large meat distributors, and a couple of them had outbreaks. I know less about this first-hand, but previous comments on HN have detailed how optimized the toilet paper supply chain is such that it can't absorb people working from home all of a sudden. Bigger, more standardized, more efficient, ruthlessly so, and then can't handle a virus. Borg-like.
- PopeDotNinja 6y agoHerd immunity is a questionable strategy, so I guess you could say... resistance is futile. XD
- Ididntdothis 6y agoI agree. Somehow we should discourage large companies and create a system that favors more smaller companies. I really don't see the value in having huge companies like Apple or Amazon that need to absorb more and more businesses to keep growing. They hinder innovation, trample over smaller companies but have the power to shape countries' policies to their advantage. In the past there was a size limit to managing a company but unfortunately technology allows for more and more central control so the trend to ever bigger companies will probably continue.
- noir_lord 6y agoCyberpunk called this back in the 70's, 80's - Corporations come to rule the world and states become less and less relevant. I sometimes feel like we live in that world already just without the cool neon/fashions. Drones, militarisation of the police, massive corporations that are basically immune to governments on a basic level.
- topkai22 6y agoI think a fair amount of cyberpunk also had an eye to the past, with the East India company and others like it serving as reference points to the mega corps of the “future” The East India company is gone, the railroads and US steel aren’t what they once were. And this age shall pass too.
- asdff 6y agoJust like how the breakup of bell liberated us from oppressive telecoms monopolizing our neighborhoods, and fostered competitive innovation in this field, right? It doesn't matter how many companies there are in an industry if the functional consequences on your life by that industry as a whole are the exact same if they were a single monolith. If it quacks like a duck... You say the railroads are a bygone era, just drive through San Marino to see what railroad money has bought and continues to buy to this very day. This wealth did not evaporate, it has only grown.
- vorpalhex 6y ago
- SketchySeaBeast 6y agoTo be fair, the Borg got beat by a unified, centralized and streamlined society.
- aphextron 6y ago>To be fair, the Borg got beat by a unified, centralized and streamlined society. Hardly. The Federation is, well, a federation. A loosely collectivized body of disparate groups, each with their own goals but united through a common cause. This was one of the central tenets of TNG; that diversity is strength.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y agoI'd say that Starfleet is pretty unified though. Individual diversity was absolutely strength, but Starfleet was unified, and when it was divided that was major plot points.
- saalweachter 6y agoDid Starfleet ever build two ships to the same design?
- SketchySeaBeast 6y agoYup. Just thinking off the top of my head in TNG for the Galaxy Class alone there was the the USS Galaxy, USS Enterprise and USS Yamato. There were also a ton more visible during the Dominion War.
- rpeden 6y agoAs an example: https://youtu.be/CUQ2nmKNH3Y?t=79 https://youtu.be/CUQ2nmKNH3Y?t=79 Plenty of Galaxies, Excelsiors, and Mirandas (or maybe variants like Soyuz) flying around.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- blaser-waffle 6y agoThe Borg was heavily implied to be a caricature of Western Capitalism. The similarity is not accidental. You will adapt to service us. You're going to become a drone. Resistance is futile.
- martythemaniak 6y agoI mean, all those economies of scale either result in lower prices (say meat packing and feed lots), or allow extra R&D to make the product better (say, image recognition in Google Photos). Decentralization, redundancy, shock absorption is something you have to explicitly value and pay for (with lower quality and/or higher prices) and I don't think this is more than a niche preoccupation. Maybe this pandemic will change things, but do you really wanna bet against lower prices?
- ikeyany 6y agoI'm not going to bet against lower prices, but I am going to bet on low-overhead validation and fault-tolerance going forward.
- edoceo 6y agoIntroduction of the individual eventually get them. Episode is "I, Borg", season 5 - Geordie names him Hugh. I'm not a nerd who remembers all this Star Trek stuff - I just watched the episode a few days ago (because I have TNG on repeat)
- panzagl 6y agoGood, we wouldn't want any nerds at this site.
- curiousllama 6y agoUnironically huge fan of this phrasing: "It's not like I'm obsessed, I just watch it 24/7"
- Nasrudith 6y agoYeah it has an interesting nuanced apathy to it. Not a high level of enthusiasm but considered the current best option. I know in High School I often went with identical breakfast despite being sick of it because I found others would leave me feeling fatigued before the late lunch hour block I was scheduled to have.