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> However, by championing this seemingly admirable ideal, these techno-boosters are at the same time reproducing some of the most atavistic features of American
by 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
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 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.