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Imagine if any one of these tech companies decided the future was in solving problems for humanity rather than how to serve adverts in a future where content wa

Imagine if any one of these tech companies decided the future was in solving problems for humanity rather than how to serve adverts in a future where content was autogenerated. The money and resources they have available is astronomical. Instead they spend it on future proofing their profits. What a sad world we have built.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
makeitdouble 1y ago
At the same time, asking them to solve social problems with money and technology and dubious morality doesn't look like the way forward either. Very aptly, the Manhattan Project or Space Race weren't aimed at the improvement of mankind per se. Motivation was a lot more specific and down to earth.
- BrenBarn 1y ago
  > At the same time, asking them to solve social problems with money and technology and dubious morality doesn't look like the way forward either. Well, no, the way forward is to just take away all that money and just spread it around.
- ed_elliott_asc 1y ago
  It’s all a bit depressing that we have the ability to do so much as a species but we don’t work together.
AndyKelley 1y ago
one of my favorite songs embodies this concept: https://soundcloud.com/adventurecapitalists/moving-mt-fuji https://soundcloud.com/adventurecapitalists/moving-mt-fuji lyrics: https://genius.com/Adventure-capitalists-moving-mt-fuji-lyrics https://genius.com/Adventure-capitalists-moving-mt-fuji-lyri... but it's not the same reading the lyrics, you really need to hear his voice
TesterVetter 1y ago
[dead]
midnightclubbed 1y ago
For a few years it seemed like Tesla and SpaceX were those companies - reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, boosting clean transportation and solar, pushing forward space exploration. But the promises turned into stock boosting lies; the environmental good into vote buying for climate change deniers, and space exploration into low earth cell-towers.
- theshackleford 1y ago
  > For a few years it seemed like Tesla Those years were a long time ago for me. I’ve been arguing musk is a snake oil salesman since at least 2014. I lost friends over it at the time, people who were very heavily invested into musk, both financially and for some reason, emotionally.
  - anon191928 1y ago
    how is he snake oil s. since that time, he with his several teams, actually made electric cars a market wide reality, cheap orbit rockets and with starlink internet almost everywhere possible on earth? snake oil would be over without actually changing the history.
    - theshackleford 1y ago
      > he with his several teams, actually made electric cars a market wide reality Electric cars? That would be Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, Tesla’s actual founders. They created the Roadster and brought the vision. Musk came in with money, staged a hostile takeover, and then rewrote the company’s history to fit his inflated ego, like the sad little man he is. It's honestly cringe. > cheap orbit rockets and with starlink internet almost everywhere possible on earth Amazing what billions in government contracts and management smart enough to keep Elon out of the way can accomplish. SpaceX deserves praise; spinning it into a Elon is a genius narrative? Not so much. As for the snake oil, just a few of Elon's greatest hits: 1. Hyperloop. Old idea's wrapped in new buzzwords. Never viable. He didn’t invent it, but he sure wants you to think he did, just like with Telsa. 2. FSD “next year” since forever. Still not here. Still being marketed like it's solved. And still charging like a wounded bull for it. 3. Robotaxis and appreciation hype. Musk literally claimed Teslas would go up in value and earn passive income as robotaxis. It doesnt get much more snake oil than this. "We’re confident the cars will be worth more than what you pay for them today." – July 2019 "It’s financially insane to buy anything other than a Tesla." – April 2019 Absolutely laughable. Show me one consumer owned Tesla that’s worth more today than it was in 2019. I’ll wait. If you can't, we'll mark it down as snake oil bullshit. 4. Optimus. Elon hyped this like Tesla had cracked general purpose humanoid robotics out of nowhere, leapfrogging companies that have been grinding on this for decades. The first reveal? A guy in a suit dancing. The follow ups? Stiff prototypes doing slow, assisted movements and following that, remotely controlled animatronics and so on. Meanwhile, Musk is on stage talking about replacing human labor, reshaping the economy, and bots becoming more valuable than cars. None of it is remotely close. But it worked, stock popped, headlines flooded in, and the fantasy sold. 5. SolarCity. An overhyped, underdelivered money pit that Tesla had to bail out. Just another Elon tyre fire. 6. "Funding secured." Flat out lied about taking Tesla private at $420. SEC slapped him, but the stock soared. Mission accomplished. And that’s just scratching the surface of his bullshit. It ignores all the other missed deadlines, quality issues, inflated delivery claims, etc etc etc. Here is some more of his bullshit, also I am sure not exhaustive: https://elonmusk.today/ https://elonmusk.today/ Yes, he’s had wins. But wins don’t erase the mountain of bullshit. Elon’s biggest output isn’t cars or rockets. It’s hype. His true skill is selling fantasy to retail investors and tech worshipping middled aged white dudes who still think he’s some genius messiah. Strip the PR away, and you’ve got a guy who overpromises, underdelivers, and never stops running his mouth.
jodrellblank 1y ago
"In the real world, this has led to a pathology where the tech sector maximizes its own comfort. You don't have to go far to see this. Hop on BART after the conference and take a look at Oakland, or take a stroll through downtown San Francisco and try to persuade yourself you're in the heart of a boom that has lasted for forty years. You'll see a residential theme park for tech workers, surrounded by areas of poverty and misery that have seen no benefit and ample harm from our presence. We pretend that by maximizing our convenience and productivity, we're hastening the day when we finally make life better for all those other people. We should not listen to people who promise to make Mars safe for human habitation, until we have seen them make Oakland safe for human habitation. We should be skeptical of promises to revolutionize transportation from people who can't fix BART, or have never taken BART." - https://idlewords.com/talks/sase_panel.htm https://idlewords.com/talks/sase_panel.htm "Living standards in Poland in 2010 had more than doubled from 1990. In the same time period, in the United States, I’ve seen a whole lot of nothing. Despite fabulous technical progress, practically all of it pioneered in our country, there’s been a singular failure to connect our fabulous prosperity with the average person. A study just out shows that for the median male worker in the United States, the highest lifetime wages came if you entered the workforce in 1967. That is astonishing. People born in 1942 had better lifetime earnings prospects than people entering the workforce today. You can see this failure to connect with your own eyes even in a rich place like Silicon Valley. There are homeless encampments across the street from Facebook headquarters. California has a larger GDP than France, and at the same time has the highest poverty rate in America, adjusted for cost of living. Not only did the tech sector fail to build up the communities around it, but it’s left people worse off than before, by pricing them out of the places they grew up." - https://idlewords.com/talks/notes_from_an_emergency.htm https://idlewords.com/talks/notes_from_an_emergency.htm

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

makeitdouble 1y ago

At the same time, asking them to solve social problems with money and technology and dubious morality doesn't look like the way forward either. Very aptly, the Manhattan Project or Space Race weren't aimed at the improvement of mankind per se. Motivation was a lot more specific and down to earth.

BrenBarn 1y ago
> At the same time, asking them to solve social problems with money and technology and dubious morality doesn't look like the way forward either. Well, no, the way forward is to just take away all that money and just spread it around.
ed_elliott_asc 1y ago
It’s all a bit depressing that we have the ability to do so much as a species but we don’t work together.

AndyKelley 1y ago

one of my favorite songs embodies this concept: https://soundcloud.com/adventurecapitalists/moving-mt-fuji https://soundcloud.com/adventurecapitalists/moving-mt-fuji lyrics: https://genius.com/Adventure-capitalists-moving-mt-fuji-lyrics https://genius.com/Adventure-capitalists-moving-mt-fuji-lyri... but it's not the same reading the lyrics, you really need to hear his voice

TesterVetter 1y ago

[dead]

midnightclubbed 1y ago

For a few years it seemed like Tesla and SpaceX were those companies - reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, boosting clean transportation and solar, pushing forward space exploration. But the promises turned into stock boosting lies; the environmental good into vote buying for climate change deniers, and space exploration into low earth cell-towers.

theshackleford 1y ago
> For a few years it seemed like Tesla Those years were a long time ago for me. I’ve been arguing musk is a snake oil salesman since at least 2014. I lost friends over it at the time, people who were very heavily invested into musk, both financially and for some reason, emotionally.
- anon191928 1y ago
  how is he snake oil s. since that time, he with his several teams, actually made electric cars a market wide reality, cheap orbit rockets and with starlink internet almost everywhere possible on earth? snake oil would be over without actually changing the history.
  - theshackleford 1y ago
    > he with his several teams, actually made electric cars a market wide reality Electric cars? That would be Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, Tesla’s actual founders. They created the Roadster and brought the vision. Musk came in with money, staged a hostile takeover, and then rewrote the company’s history to fit his inflated ego, like the sad little man he is. It's honestly cringe. > cheap orbit rockets and with starlink internet almost everywhere possible on earth Amazing what billions in government contracts and management smart enough to keep Elon out of the way can accomplish. SpaceX deserves praise; spinning it into a Elon is a genius narrative? Not so much. As for the snake oil, just a few of Elon's greatest hits: 1. Hyperloop. Old idea's wrapped in new buzzwords. Never viable. He didn’t invent it, but he sure wants you to think he did, just like with Telsa. 2. FSD “next year” since forever. Still not here. Still being marketed like it's solved. And still charging like a wounded bull for it. 3. Robotaxis and appreciation hype. Musk literally claimed Teslas would go up in value and earn passive income as robotaxis. It doesnt get much more snake oil than this. "We’re confident the cars will be worth more than what you pay for them today." – July 2019 "It’s financially insane to buy anything other than a Tesla." – April 2019 Absolutely laughable. Show me one consumer owned Tesla that’s worth more today than it was in 2019. I’ll wait. If you can't, we'll mark it down as snake oil bullshit. 4. Optimus. Elon hyped this like Tesla had cracked general purpose humanoid robotics out of nowhere, leapfrogging companies that have been grinding on this for decades. The first reveal? A guy in a suit dancing. The follow ups? Stiff prototypes doing slow, assisted movements and following that, remotely controlled animatronics and so on. Meanwhile, Musk is on stage talking about replacing human labor, reshaping the economy, and bots becoming more valuable than cars. None of it is remotely close. But it worked, stock popped, headlines flooded in, and the fantasy sold. 5. SolarCity. An overhyped, underdelivered money pit that Tesla had to bail out. Just another Elon tyre fire. 6. "Funding secured." Flat out lied about taking Tesla private at $420. SEC slapped him, but the stock soared. Mission accomplished. And that’s just scratching the surface of his bullshit. It ignores all the other missed deadlines, quality issues, inflated delivery claims, etc etc etc. Here is some more of his bullshit, also I am sure not exhaustive: https://elonmusk.today/ https://elonmusk.today/ Yes, he’s had wins. But wins don’t erase the mountain of bullshit. Elon’s biggest output isn’t cars or rockets. It’s hype. His true skill is selling fantasy to retail investors and tech worshipping middled aged white dudes who still think he’s some genius messiah. Strip the PR away, and you’ve got a guy who overpromises, underdelivers, and never stops running his mouth.

jodrellblank 1y ago

"In the real world, this has led to a pathology where the tech sector maximizes its own comfort. You don't have to go far to see this. Hop on BART after the conference and take a look at Oakland, or take a stroll through downtown San Francisco and try to persuade yourself you're in the heart of a boom that has lasted for forty years. You'll see a residential theme park for tech workers, surrounded by areas of poverty and misery that have seen no benefit and ample harm from our presence. We pretend that by maximizing our convenience and productivity, we're hastening the day when we finally make life better for all those other people. We should not listen to people who promise to make Mars safe for human habitation, until we have seen them make Oakland safe for human habitation. We should be skeptical of promises to revolutionize transportation from people who can't fix BART, or have never taken BART." - https://idlewords.com/talks/sase_panel.htm https://idlewords.com/talks/sase_panel.htm "Living standards in Poland in 2010 had more than doubled from 1990. In the same time period, in the United States, I’ve seen a whole lot of nothing. Despite fabulous technical progress, practically all of it pioneered in our country, there’s been a singular failure to connect our fabulous prosperity with the average person. A study just out shows that for the median male worker in the United States, the highest lifetime wages came if you entered the workforce in 1967. That is astonishing. People born in 1942 had better lifetime earnings prospects than people entering the workforce today. You can see this failure to connect with your own eyes even in a rich place like Silicon Valley. There are homeless encampments across the street from Facebook headquarters. California has a larger GDP than France, and at the same time has the highest poverty rate in America, adjusted for cost of living. Not only did the tech sector fail to build up the communities around it, but it’s left people worse off than before, by pricing them out of the places they grew up." - https://idlewords.com/talks/notes_from_an_emergency.htm https://idlewords.com/talks/notes_from_an_emergency.htm