Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

Copies of The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho’s famous novel about an Andalusian shepherd boy who finds his destiny by going on a journey to Egypt, had been placed on every chair. 

the only correct answer to such a display of bad taste would be etc etc.

Lol, crossover with relationship dealbreakers thread- an ex gf once tried to get me to read that book. I mean, it wasn't a dealbreaker as such then, but it would be now.

Trying to get me to read a damn book like some nerd

Started watching Wild Wild Country and was thinking a lot about how much Silicon Valley culture likely owes to the Osho phenomenon (and of course other similar phenomena that were occurring simultaneously).

Corey Pein has been doing the podcast book tour:

http://majorityfm.libsyn.com/1856-silicon-valley-not-your-friend-w-corey-pein

Aaaaand we had him on my show, too:

https://soundcloud.com/givingthemic/podcasts-good-silicon-valley-bad-with-corey-pein

finished carreyrou's theranos book, and man...

one of the wildest things is that holmes presented her original idea for a device to her stanford professor and he was so blown away by it that he vouched for her and her company for years afterward. and as far as i can tell her proposal was at the same level of detail as an explanation of the star trek tricorder? it sounds kind of cool, and you have some half-assed ideas for mechanisms, but it's basically just pure fiction. that endorsement helped opened up silicon valley doors for her, even though there's not much evidence that she was anything more than a reasonably smart kid who was good at selling bullshit to credulous people with money.

there are some weird class things, too. she and her family were really well connected--the father of her childhood friend was a venture capitalist who invested a million dollars right when they were starting out!--but her dad was jealous of his more successful peers and angry that previous generations had squandered the family fortune.

people at the company were raising red flags about elizabeth lying about the technology and finances in 2006, but somehow she managed to purge everyone who opposed her and things just kept rolling along like that for another decade.

Kill the tech bro, save the world: how CEOs became Hollywood's new supervillains

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/06/tech-bros-ceo-hollywood-supervillains

Yup they are now the stock villains of my generation.

Just needs the next step of their ideology actually being at issue. Iron Man's villains are bad Tony Starks but the things Tony Stark stands for remain intact. SPECTRE's villains have a scheme to replace spies with apps or something, but they're cynically exploiting the government, when it would have been way more interesting for them to be true believers in their efficient, cutting-edge, market-driven solutions etc. I am kinda surprised there hasn't been an "evil Uber" movie with self-driving cars that turn against us or whose hailing app compels the drivers to carry out different pieces of an evil crime or w/e.

Those tend to be based around social media, as obviously kids know a lot less than grownups about the web.

Wait, wasn’t there that thriller a few years back where the villain was Tim Robbins as a Gates/Jobs oligarch type?

Scorpio on the Simpsons?

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BM2VjZjdiYzYtOGU1Yy00NWZmLWEyOTUtM2QzMDlkYmRlYmM2XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTQxNzMzNDI@._V1_.jpg

http://www.tvovermind.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Antitrust-movie-on-hacking-and-Computers.jpg

but tbf 90s/early 00s Bill Gates-y villains feel like a different thing than the villainous "disruptive" app developer of today

RECALCULATING

View To a Kill's Max Zorin controlled access to a resource - computing power - and was a classic Bond villain in that regard. Tomorrow Never Dies' Elliott Carver was a media baron, but he didn't want to use disinfo campaigns as a direct means of accomplishing his goals.

I think there might be a new flavor to our century's monopolist tech villains, in that they choose to use everyday reliance on technology to achieve their nefarious goals, and they aren't all played by dudes over 45 anymore, but the jury's out until I spend the time to watch these shitty films (again) and really pay attention to the boring, paper-thin plots.

Elizabeth Holmes indicted on federal wire fraud charges

yay

about halfway thru bad blood right now and it’s a compelling mixture of ‘haha these corporate dumbasses deserve each other, how did this go on for so long’ and ‘wow these sociopaths really fucked a lot of lives on their way to jail’

Pretty much!

And Carreyrou with the perfect own.

"First they say you're crazy, then they fight you and then all of a sudden, you change the world." https://t.co/a5buw8RnBD

— John Carreyrou (@JohnCarreyrou) June 15, 2018

lmao

🙄✊🍆 pic.twitter.com/kDXWfkWnow

— Quantian📉 (@quantian1) June 16, 2018

An extremely good thread for this thread in turn.

Okay, now let's talk about the history of futurism in @WIRED. There is a ton here, but I think I've settle on a handful of articles that illustrate the broader trend.#wiredarchive

— davekarpf (@davekarpf) July 12, 2018

oh man do I remember that Long Boom issue and how stupid it seemed at the time

I just realized my arc with Wired Magazine has basically been a leading indicator of my arc with
SV & the Bay Area - loved it, then realized it was actually overpriced, largely mediocre and driven by zealous marketing, now just find it kind of pitiable and look for the decent spots in a sea of drying mud

well, I like *my* neighborhood

Speaking as someone standing in mud wait hold on

Everything’s relative. I live up the street from Trump.

that's a good thread! Wired has long been my shorthand for the 90s iteration of the wide-eyed fusion of techno-utopianism and ostensibly countercultural libertarianism (which fusion, circa 1970, you would have found in the overlaps between bucky fuller and stewart brand). great to have that laid out, with links, in one convenient place.

when i got to college in the early 90s my freshman year roommate described wired as "mondo 2000 for businessmen" which is still the best description i've ever heard

(of it)

as a college freshman I’d have been like “what’s mondo 5000?”

I had a bunch of issues of Mondo 2000 when they were new in high school. That was my shit.

yay

about halfway thru bad blood right now and it’s a compelling mixture of ‘haha these corporate dumbasses deserve each other, how did this go on for so long’ and ‘wow these sociopaths really fucked a lot of lives on their way to jail’

― CARL MARKS PRINCIPAL INVESTING AND ADVISORY SERVICES (bizarro gazzara), Friday, June 15, 2018 5:39 PM (four weeks ago)

yeah, same here. ridiculously compelling book

Got the audiobook on hold…

Dave Karpf's book Analytic Activism changed my whole game btw highly recommended

Yeah the Bad Blood story is a traet, as they say. Can't wait for the company to finally dissolve next month.

Reading Bad Blood (which is excellent) at the same time as going through a ‘disruption workshop’ at work has been interesting.

I work for a big company which, like many, is extremely nervous about being a big company. The external consultant running the event kept hammering the point that innovation isn’t enough - nor is being superior to the competition- you either have to change the entire frame of reference your industry is working with (a la Netflix, Uber, Air b’n’b) or get swept away by some start-up that will.

Which is kind of fine if you are lending DVDs through the post, less so in a highly regulated, reputation-driven business where the outcome of your service has a meaningful impact on the direction of the customers’ lives. The Theranos model of getting a rapid prototype to market in the belief that you can iterate your way to something amazing as you go, and the Safeway / Walgreens fomo, leading to avoiding awkward questions about efficacy, are both hugely relatable traps. Thankfully there are enough safeguards in place within the business to stop that with us but the disrupt-or-die model is absolutely going to lead to a Theranos Of Nursing / Social Care, Theranos Of Education, etc, etc at some point.

It already has if you’re in the states. Charter schools!

ShariVari, was there a breakdown of what the different company types are including one called "market shaper?"

Because I think my employer's executives were presented the same material and came up with presentations for the rest of us with some of that material

i mean there's a reason the word 'disruption' used to have / should still have negative connotations

I mean, fwiw I am in an industry where it's impossible for any product to make it to market in less than 5 - 7 years so no one's going to go wild and throw junk into the market but I _know_ people want to do exactly as you're saying.

I'd mention a couple missteps I know a little about but not outside 77 :P

I thankfully work in the one corner of technology business where “disruptive” is still a really bad term

I work for a multinational and we’re doing a mix of keeping our reputation high because everyone knows us and micro teams with startup culture mentality

Right now in one area we’re focusing on emphasizing selling a service/experience first and product second, while still staying competitive in the products we offer

Kind of a weird scenario but admittedly one only a huge company can get away with doing

Uh, so famed batshit political toonslinger Ben Garrison decided to do one on Elon Musk:

https://grrrgraphics.com/teslas-musk-mobile/

ben garrison... otm?

...yeah, fuckin' weird, ain't it

Old Wired and computer mags are fun to read, even though I lived through the era/had several Geocities pages/etc. there's a feeling of unreality about early-mid '90s technology now.

wish I'd kept a stash of PC Magazine and Byte. the former to look at the John Dvorak columns and laugh about how they were insanely wrong just a year later. the Byte ones because it was just a solid publication

see if you can spot the odd one out in this lineup of speakers for websummit, 'the best technology conference on the planet'

https://i.redd.it/m8eoc0tnr0g11.png

was ready to be surprised, and result exceeded expectations

it's surprising!