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What flashes through my mind when I see this type of corporate fetish, even it being Google, is that the future is much more likely to be version of Brave New W
by capred 14y ago
What flashes through my mind when I see this type of corporate fetish, even it being Google, is that the future is much more likely to be version of Brave New World than 1984.
We consume not because we're told to, but because we want to. We become vehicles in an economic equation.
Something is unnerving about the fact so many of us feel privileged to have the ability to dedicate our lives to what is essentially an organization to make money. I know it stikes odd to think that's the only purpose of Google (it seems not to be) but it certainly is for a significant portion of the corporatocracy.
Those two factors combined (variables in an economic equation and we have blind faith in corporations) can undermine the basis of a free society whose goals go beyond the enrichment of a handful of shareholders.
- mbrock 14y agoCompanies voluntarily improving workplace conditions seems like a laudable achievement of free society. In the epitaph of our civilization, maybe it'll say "but after all, you gotta give it to them: at least some of their corporations had offices that were actually sorta livable."
- jrockway 14y agoAren't individuals essentially organizations trying to make money? Perhaps we're not so different from corporations after all.
- mbrock 14y agoEverybody on Hacker News wants to make a wad of money so they can fuck off from corporate drudgery and play around -- there's an end goal, it's a rational process for most individuals, not a world-devouring cancer.
- Filligree 14y agoNo, no we aren't. Individuals try to maximize something quite different than money, money is mostly instrumental.
- coldtea 14y agoOn HN maybe. In the wider world, no. Individuals have far more varied dreams, aspirations, fears and sentiments that "trying to make money". Most of them actually only try to make money because they are forced to in order to survive. Corporations on the other hand exist almost solely for making money. Sometimes they add pride and some personal vision in, but those are few and far between (and it still comes second to money). You can see a person giving its life for someone else's benefit. A parent taking care of a chronically sick child, for example. No corporation would ever do that.
- brown9-2 14y agoWe consume not because we're told to, but because we want to. This isn't the theme of "Brave New World" that I picked up on, and I don't think the book featured a world with profit-seeking corporations. Seems to me like "consuming because we want to" is the better choice of the two, no?