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christ this whole article reads like a hot wet handjob for the west coast. am i somehow supposed to golf clap the libertarian gig economy that leaves office wo
by nimbius 4y ago
christ this whole article reads like a hot wet handjob for the west coast. am i somehow supposed to golf clap the libertarian gig economy that leaves office workers living out of cars in san jose and uber drivers pissing in soda bottles for slave wages under the 405 while simultaneously crucifying the mental health of a generation of youth and silencing all but the most brand loyal speech online?
the thing this article never mentions is californias hippies sold out, bought up all the real estate, became landed gentry and left their kids with the bill. apple replaces your itunes with drm tunes and the rights are to be a consumer, not to repair.
the hackers left a looooong time ago, and now most of them hack tractors lately. in fact the minute gig fiber showed up was when the virtual class ceased to be anything but an exodus for california. this is nostalgiabate.
- scandox 4y ago> However, by championing this seemingly admirable ideal, these techno-boosters are at the same time reproducing some of the most atavistic features of American society, especially those derived from the bitter legacy of slavery. Their utopian vision of California depends upon a wilful blindness towards the other — much less positive — features of life on the West Coast: racism, poverty and environmental degradation. > And who would have suspected that as technology and freedom were worshipped more and more, it would become less and less possible to say anything sensible about the society in which they were applied? > One of the weirdest things about the rightwards drift of the Californian Ideology is that the West Coast itself is a creation of the mixed economy. Government dollars were used to build the irrigation systems, highways, schools, universities and other infrastructural projects which makes the good life possible in California. On top of these public subsidies, the West Coast hi tech industrial complex has been feasting off the fattest pork barrel in history for decades. Bruce Sterling is not a fool or a shill. I'm really not convinced you read this entire article.
- nimbius 4y agobruce has clearly never driven down californias potholed highways, admired its last-in-the-nation literacy rate from public education, or pontificated on its unaffordable gilded ponzi schemes posing as higher education. the unchecked farm irrigation has reduced the state to a perpetually drought plagued desert...it single handedly created the toxic salton sea and reduced borrego springs to a sand scorched purgatory. high speed rail is a boondoggled turd no politician can seem to keep from screwing up despite their californian ideological proclivities tech worship isnt preventing free speech, its the tech companies this article ostensibly sings praise to. reproduction of neoslavery isnt the biggest issue thats just late stage capitalism. its the persistent failure at any level of the californian ideology to do anything to correct it for the past forty years thats a damning indictment of its proposition
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- Apocryphon 4y agoYou and the author are not in disagreement in the critique of the ideology. > However, by championing this seemingly admirable ideal, these techno-boosters are at the same time reproducing some of the most atavistic features of American society, especially those derived from the bitter legacy of slavery. Their utopian vision of California depends upon a wilful blindness towards the other — much less positive — features of life on the West Coast: racism, poverty and environmental degradation.[5] Ironically, in the not too distant past, the intellectuals and artists of the Bay Area were passionately concerned about these issues.
- narag 4y agothe hackers left a looooong time ago... At the moment I write this, the title has a "(1995)" so it could explain the disconnect.
- cmrdporcupine 4y agoHuh? Did we read the same article? This was explicitly a critique of the techno-libertarian ex-hippies, along the lines of everything you just said. Read it through the end and read each paragraph. I read and loved this and propagated it around my friends when it came out in the mid 90s. It was a poignant criticism of the bullshit fake utopia being sold by Silicon Valley and the .com boom at the time.
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- MomoXenosaga 4y agoExodus because at the end of the day they are all greedy motherfuckers who hate paying taxes and love the deregulation of Texas. Where you can still pollute and exploit and call it entrepreneurship. California is actually trying to enact laws against the gig economy. I was never for a minute fooled that the hackers were good people.
- DonHopkins 4y ago>the hackers left a looooong time ago, and now most of them hack tractors lately. I too know some great hackers who left California a long time ago to hack tractors, who are still outstanding in their field!