3 ms·
When you onboard at meta (circa 2020) the execs like to make vague references to this rare out of print book on media studies that they say presaged everything
by gen220 2y ago
When you onboard at meta (circa 2020) the execs like to make vague references to this rare out of print book on media studies that they say presaged everything and explains a lot about how they think about their role in the media ecosystem. They liked to lift quotes from it to justify certain decisions or whatever. They encouraged you to buy the book “if you could find a copy”.
I like reading old books and philosophy so I found a copy. It was basically completely unfollow-able, and at best tangentially related to anything they were doing.
I think having some biblical text to appeal to, in order to justify what is otherwise completely self-dealing, self-serving behavior is some foundational principle of the VP lizard school in Silicon Valley.
It’s a sleight of hand. People will come up with brilliant illusions to distract you from the convenient hand that’s wrist deep into your coin purse.
Not to say there aren’t interesting or valuable intellectual ideas in these books — in Girard, or what have you. But ultimately you have to judge people objectively on the sort of behaviors they exhibit, not on the “illusions” of the intellectual or philosophical explanations they give for those behaviors.
- moolcool 2y agoWhat was the book?
- km144 2y agoThat's fascinating, and yeah it's just the kind of thing I was thinking of—the concrete example is nice. There is indeed something quite perverse about the fusion of philosophy and unfettered laissez-faire capitalism in the information age. I wonder if it's more of an adaptation or coping mechanism than a foundational principle. I think these people cannot bear to actually digest the cynical view of what they are doing in the world so they grasp for something more esoteric and hold that up as guiding principles. If they were actually doing something good, they wouldn't have to find a book that explains why what they're doing is good in some indirect way. If you look at Jimmy Wales' guiding philosophy, for example, it is clearly and directly correlated to the work being done at Wikipedia. There's no jumping through hoops, because most people agree that Wikipedia is a good thing. Any idea what the book was?
- gen220 2y agoI agree, that it can be a coping mechanism. You find something that's esoteric enough that you can project your goodwill onto it and use it to justify your weird behaviors. I also agree that if you're doing good, your work speaks for itself, and does not need to be justified. I think Rockefeller, for example, struggled with this a lot later in life when he tried to pay for the cruelty his career with a later devotion to philanthropy. But I don't think it worked. Gates, Zuckerberg, and Bezos will need to wrestle with this, too, regardless of how much they "donate" to "charity". I don't envy them their positions in life. The book was "Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man" by McLuhan, Marshall. You can find it pretty regularly on biblio for ~$150.
- philwelch 2y agoMarshall McLuhan was the most famous and influential intellectuals of the second half of the 20th century, and the one whose ideas are probably the most obviously relevant to Facebook. He’s not some sort of obscure figure at all. I’m sorry if he wasn’t your cup of tea and it’s totally possible that Facebook execs weren’t understanding and applying his ideas correctly but frankly I would be a lot more worried about the company if the top leadership wasn’t reading McLuhan.
- moolcool 2y agoHaving read McLuhan, I'm honestly surprised anybody at Meta would be a fan. His work can easily be read today as a pretty damning indictment of the inherent problems with social media.
- r4ltman 2y agoThere's more to it obviously
- gen220 2y agoI didn’t say the author was obscure or that his ideas were not relevant, but rather that this particular text was rare. I was overly dismissive in referring to its contents as tangential (it’s a framework for analyzing media that makes some vague but bold claims about what constituted effective content on varying mediums for media at different points in time). But he can be “famous” and the material can be relevant and the original point can still stand — they found something sufficiently relevant and mysterious and famous enough to point to as an external appeal to authority to justify the sale ads on the serving of visual opium to children. I don’t think that would have been McLuhan’s cup of tea, eh? But if you do it in his name, maybe it’s easier to swallow.