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> Silicon Valley on a mission Seriously and sincerely, I'd like to hear a dozen definitions of what people think that "mission" is in 2024. I think we long de

> Silicon Valley on a mission Seriously and sincerely, I'd like to hear a dozen definitions of what people think that "mission" is in 2024. I think we long departed from "making the world a better place". And yet the change simply cannot be explained by greed, money, or obsession with growth. Surely a lot of the venture capitalists that frequent this forum must be as confused as the next person if they still hold on to the ideal of "doing good with money". What I see is the rise of a terrifying quasi-religious anti-humanist cult with overtones of masochism and self-hatred (of human life). I'm no big fan of Steve Jobs, but clearly he would be horrified by many of the anti-human sentiments expressed daily in forums like this. Is it too late to redefine digital technology as humane, and return to the roots of SV [0] ? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology

CatWChainsaw 2y ago
Between e/acc+singularity, hyper-libertarianism and the actual locked-in, rent-seeking, culture-choking techno-feudalism we're getting, it's always been pretty obvious to me that the "mission" is to become the secular equivalent of a god, and then reign eternal, just like the world-building genre of games primes them for. Too bad it's a big club and everybody here won't be in it, eh.
- nonrandomstring 2y ago
  > Too bad it's a big club and everybody here won't be in it, eh. There is some uncomfortable truth in this. Those who identify with technology, and take for granted being its masters, controllers and benefactors, end up the most disappointed. The hoi polloi are happily indifferent to the cargo cult of shiny stuff that comes and goes, which they buy because their friend got one. But those intelligent enough to know what we could have had, what's possible and what's lost, will feel betrayed by larger forces that nobody controls, whatever "big club" you imagine yourself in. It's one thing for a man to lose to lose his faith. It's something else when a priest does.
  - CatWChainsaw 2y ago
    Well, most revolutions succeed when the overproduced elites join the masses to overthrow the rulers. So it's probably a good thing in this case if the priests lose their faith, as long as they do it quickly enough. Otherwise we'll all just be NPCs in Altman's and Zuckerberg's metaverses.

CatWChainsaw 2y ago

Between e/acc+singularity, hyper-libertarianism and the actual locked-in, rent-seeking, culture-choking techno-feudalism we're getting, it's always been pretty obvious to me that the "mission" is to become the secular equivalent of a god, and then reign eternal, just like the world-building genre of games primes them for. Too bad it's a big club and everybody here won't be in it, eh.

nonrandomstring 2y ago
> Too bad it's a big club and everybody here won't be in it, eh. There is some uncomfortable truth in this. Those who identify with technology, and take for granted being its masters, controllers and benefactors, end up the most disappointed. The hoi polloi are happily indifferent to the cargo cult of shiny stuff that comes and goes, which they buy because their friend got one. But those intelligent enough to know what we could have had, what's possible and what's lost, will feel betrayed by larger forces that nobody controls, whatever "big club" you imagine yourself in. It's one thing for a man to lose to lose his faith. It's something else when a priest does.
- CatWChainsaw 2y ago
  Well, most revolutions succeed when the overproduced elites join the masses to overthrow the rulers. So it's probably a good thing in this case if the priests lose their faith, as long as they do it quickly enough. Otherwise we'll all just be NPCs in Altman's and Zuckerberg's metaverses.