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How Did Silicon Valley Turn into a Creepy Cult?

26 points by Khaine 2y ago

jitl 2y ago
Quite the nothing burger read, the article doesn’t even try to answer its title question. The way this post is written reminds me of a podcast that stretched 10 minutes of information out into an hour of airtime, or a YouTube video that stretches 3 minutes of information out into 10 minutes. There’s a few points sprinkled in here, usually one every couple “paragraphs” but really not much: - The HP guys back in the good old days funded hospitals, these new tech guys are just weirdos (ignore Chan Zuckerberg hospital) - There was a weird guy back then who changed his name to FM-2030 - Google hired Ray Kurzweil who is pretty cult of the machine-y - Shockley also weird - Tech today (Nvidia) makes a lot of money and is “dysfunctional” - Some screenshots of Twitter polls of my audience showing my readers agree tech is bad and getting worse - Don Draper at Big Sur.jpg
braza 2y ago
> There’s now overwhelming evidence of how destructive the new tech can be. Just look at the metrics. The more people are plugged in, the higher are their rates of depression, suicidal tendencies, self-harm, mental illness, and other alarming indicators. I think that is important to see the effects of a hyper-connected society from a public health standpoint, but I do not buy that kind of cynic argument, because it's shaped without any nuance that is it hard to take the writer as a serious person. Background and ecological factors affect the way that we see technology. I came from a scarcity world and digital technology was the entry point for my community to be more affluent, and intellectually free and make education more accessible; on the other side currently, I live in a hyper-post-scarcity society that sees technology as a threat from the democracy perspective and in terms of privacy. > That’s especially true because our leaders—political, business, or otherwise—are letting us down. For whatever reason, they refuse to notice what the creepy billionaires (who by pure coincidence are also huge campaign donors) are up to. That's the main issue that I have with this whole tech fear argument: most of those are completely out of touch with the current state of affairs on how society and the political system work. In the post-scarcity society in which I live, people are more concerned about immigration, inflation, and societal return over their taxes (especially the working class). Of course, governments can work in parallel on several things but capping any random billionaire tech company won't change that reality and most of the times it hijacks the whole debate around more important things.
jmclnx 2y ago
>Tech leaders were built differently back then I think this is because these people saw the horrors of WWII, plus some of them were children during the 1930s, not knowing were their next meal will come from. The people in Silicon never experienced first hand how bad things could get. Now we have people there who never saw real suffering and in a way live in a bubble. edit: spelling
- jauntywundrkind 2y ago
  People greatful to a society for existing rather than constantly proving themselves above it.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
skmurphy 2y ago
Bright, creative individuals are outliers who pursue ideas contrary to conventional wisdom. Sometimes they are correct and improve the quality of our lives, and sometimes they are (badly) mistaken. Expertise and accomplishment in one field do not necessarily translate well to other domains.

26 points by Khaine 2y ago

jitl 2y ago

Quite the nothing burger read, the article doesn’t even try to answer its title question. The way this post is written reminds me of a podcast that stretched 10 minutes of information out into an hour of airtime, or a YouTube video that stretches 3 minutes of information out into 10 minutes. There’s a few points sprinkled in here, usually one every couple “paragraphs” but really not much: - The HP guys back in the good old days funded hospitals, these new tech guys are just weirdos (ignore Chan Zuckerberg hospital) - There was a weird guy back then who changed his name to FM-2030 - Google hired Ray Kurzweil who is pretty cult of the machine-y - Shockley also weird - Tech today (Nvidia) makes a lot of money and is “dysfunctional” - Some screenshots of Twitter polls of my audience showing my readers agree tech is bad and getting worse - Don Draper at Big Sur.jpg

braza 2y ago

> There’s now overwhelming evidence of how destructive the new tech can be. Just look at the metrics. The more people are plugged in, the higher are their rates of depression, suicidal tendencies, self-harm, mental illness, and other alarming indicators. I think that is important to see the effects of a hyper-connected society from a public health standpoint, but I do not buy that kind of cynic argument, because it's shaped without any nuance that is it hard to take the writer as a serious person. Background and ecological factors affect the way that we see technology. I came from a scarcity world and digital technology was the entry point for my community to be more affluent, and intellectually free and make education more accessible; on the other side currently, I live in a hyper-post-scarcity society that sees technology as a threat from the democracy perspective and in terms of privacy. > That’s especially true because our leaders—political, business, or otherwise—are letting us down. For whatever reason, they refuse to notice what the creepy billionaires (who by pure coincidence are also huge campaign donors) are up to. That's the main issue that I have with this whole tech fear argument: most of those are completely out of touch with the current state of affairs on how society and the political system work. In the post-scarcity society in which I live, people are more concerned about immigration, inflation, and societal return over their taxes (especially the working class). Of course, governments can work in parallel on several things but capping any random billionaire tech company won't change that reality and most of the times it hijacks the whole debate around more important things.

jmclnx 2y ago

>Tech leaders were built differently back then I think this is because these people saw the horrors of WWII, plus some of them were children during the 1930s, not knowing were their next meal will come from. The people in Silicon never experienced first hand how bad things could get. Now we have people there who never saw real suffering and in a way live in a bubble. edit: spelling

jauntywundrkind 2y ago
People greatful to a society for existing rather than constantly proving themselves above it.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

skmurphy 2y ago

Bright, creative individuals are outliers who pursue ideas contrary to conventional wisdom. Sometimes they are correct and improve the quality of our lives, and sometimes they are (badly) mistaken. Expertise and accomplishment in one field do not necessarily translate well to other domains.