Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

morozov also fired his agent for being a main conduit between epstein and these guys. it’s all so gross. and so damning as far as why tech has ultimately been so lacking in imagination despite all that money.

Kickstarter is doing illegal retaliatory firings of employees for union organizing:

https://slate.com/technology/2019/09/kickstarter-turmoil-union-drive-historic-tech-industry

Berkeley City Councilmember Ben Bartlett became the first elected official to purchase cannabis with cryptocurrency at a demonstration facilitated by the Blockchain Advocacy Coalition on Tuesday.

https://www.dailycal.org/2019/09/15/city-council-member-1st-elected-official-to-buy-cannabis-with-cryptocurrency/

He's running.

what the FUCK

After firing hundreds of staff, the WeWork CEO held a somber all-hands meeting explaining why it was a necessary move, but then trays of tequila were handed out and DMC from Run-DMC burst into the room and performed "It's Tricky" https://t.co/t9oGq8ebTb pic.twitter.com/cuq0aM1Tqi

— Tom Gara (@tomgara) September 18, 2019

I’m reading the Dune series and every time Herbert describes the spice trance I’m like damn... this must be how Jack Dorsey feels all the time

— Ipod ₂₀₀₁ (@alexqarbuckle) September 18, 2019

that wework story is amazing

yeah, it’s incredible in every sense of the word

He told at least one person directly that his ambitions included becoming Israel’s prime minister. More recently, he said that if he ran for anything, it would be president of the world, according to another person who spoke with him.

“The influence and impact that we are going to have on this Earth is going to be so big,” he said last year at a “summer camp” southeast of London, where the company’s staff were all flown for a music festival-like event. One day, he proposed, the company could “solve the problem of children without parents,” and from there go onto other causes such as eradicating world hunger.

He relishes trips in private jets. Last year, We bought one for more than $60 million, people familiar with the sale said. Mr. Neumann has borrowed more than $740 million against his stock and has sold multiple hundred million dollars of shares, people familiar with those sales say, eliciting widespread criticism from analysts and Silicon Valley investors. These share sales weren’t disclosed in the IPO prospectus.

this guy's net worth is like negative hundreds of millions lol

all this for the incredible revolutionary idea of... providing places where people can use their laptops

finally got around to reading this, which is majestic

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/26/silicon-valleys-crisis-of-conscience

jfc these people

Before the presentation, Van Noppen hosted a breakfast for a few members of the audience, including Justin Rosenstein, a former Facebook employee and a co-inventor of the Like button, and Chris Messina, a former Google employee and the inventor of the hashtag. Messina wore a polo shirt, revealing a tattoo on each arm: a hashtag on the right, a Burning Man logo on the left.

co-inventor of the Like button!!

at first it was just the "li" button but he thought of putting the "ke" on the end

sometimes you really wish skynet would hurry up and get here so all these tech people will stop acting like history's greatest innovators and start denying that they're history's greatest monsters and hiding in underground caves and stuff

the title of 'inventor' probably puts those two items on a higher pedestal than is necessary. but jumping from like button and hashtag to skynet risks doing even worse.

well i wouldn't wanna do anything risky

haha react

Tech executives respond to incentives, but not all incentives are financial. “Zuck wants money, he wants power, but more than anything he wants to be admired,” Tavis McGinn, who once worked at Facebook as Zuckerberg’s personal pollster, told me. “If you can affect his ability to walk into a room and command respect, that’s a real leverage point.”

how about affecting his ability to not behave like a fucking five year old.

Adam Neumann is the logical conclusion of ten years of artificially low interest rates combined with no wage or demand growth. A guy who believes he is god because he loses money renting out desks.

pretty fucked up that large banks and investment groups made up of billionaires are just shooting their shot at anything that might make money because.. they have all the money already and can't make it grow any further

https://monthlyreview.org/2016/07/01/surplus-absorption-and-waste-in-neoliberal-monopoly-capitalism/

Burn Silicon Valley to the ground and salt the earth IMO

dude, that's mean, considering it was pretty fertile agricultural land before

Okay, beat their Teslas into plowshares and set up the world's largest organic farm.

so turn it into skywalker ranch?

thx for the link, Tracer Hand

you're welcome!

Something only glancingly mentioned in the WSJ article is that one of the main things producing the record-scratch when people starting looking at the IPO was the news that WeWork were rebranding to "We", which Adam Neumann had come up with privately and then sold to the company for $6m.

Matt Levine (whose Money Stuff newsletters have been great on this) points out that theoretically this shouldn't be a problem for WeWork - if you're losing money because you're investing every penny that you have (and more) in buying new places and setting them up, and they'll start making money in six months, and then you'll plow that money (and more) into buying more places, then nervousness from investors is fine - you just stop buying new places and in six months you'll be deafened by the roar of all the money you're making, and the investors will be "Oh shit, I wish I'd invested in this six months ago". Of course, in theory you don't have an lunatic in charge.

One of the things that has, I think, happened since the WSJ article is that the corporate structure and super-share stuff has been reworked, so the total control that Neumann has will at least die with him, and there will be (some, limited) oversight. Which might be one of the signs of the end of the age of the 'unicorn', tech companies that have all of the mini-fiefdom aspects of privately held companies and all of the barrels of cash of public companies.

Actually here's a link to Levine's latest column - the story at the top about Overstock is nuts but far too long to quote here.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-19/overstock-has-had-a-wild-week

Good to know there are people still living in Pynchon-esque worlds of their own creation

THE GOOGLE WORKERS AT HCL HAVE WON THEIR UNION!!! WELCOME TO THE UNITED STEELWORKERS!!!!!

— lindsey disler (@lindseydisler) September 24, 2019

Meanwhile...

Wow. Media measurement giant Comscore and its former CEO have been charged with fraud by the SEC. https://t.co/L4LoB1Q7yw

— Alex Weprin (@alexweprin) September 24, 2019

WeWork is shutting down ALL of their “honesty markets”—self-service snack kiosks—due to excessive theft, according to a WeWork staffer pic.twitter.com/6ciUwwprKp

— Madeleine Varner (@tenuous) September 24, 2019

Business Insider not pulling any punches: https://www.businessinsider.com/firing-adam-neumann-wont-solve-flaws-in-wework-business-model-2019-9?r=US&IR=T

excerpt from uncanny valley in the new yorker this week. i've heard great things about the book (out in a couple of months). this piece rang very true for me.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/30/four-years-in-startups

Now that the IPO's off the table and all the big dogs who were set to rake in their share of the loot when WeWork went public have absorbed the idea that the WeWork money spigot is turned off, Business Insider is freed to produce a hard-hitting critical article that points out many adverse facts that have been known for a long time. /deepcynicism

caek yeah it's a good piece. her abstraction of well-known players feels a little gimmicky at first but then really works to emphasize the surreal aspects of life inside the bubble.

what's the company that Noah gets fired from? (in the article)

Hey y'all, whatcha think about "subscription housing"/"housing subscription"?

https://hoodline.com/2019/09/new-church-market-building-to-become-part-of-short-term-housing-subscription-scheme

Ah, found it. Mixpanel.

xp -Tech bros are working hard to make San Francisco the most boring possible dystopia.

subscription housing, isn't that called a lease

Inventing extended stay hotels

a box of housing delivered to your door monthly

get in the box!

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/wework-and-counterfeit-capitalism

Inventing extended stay hotels

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Saturday, September 28, 2019 5:34 PM (three days ago)

exactly -- and the thing is, (as the article mentions) the tenants have to stay at least 30 days or otherwise it is considered a "hotel" which has different zoning classifications and restrictions (and somewhat different building/fire codes) -- basically they are complying with the letter of the law and saying fuck you to the spirit of the law (which is equivalent to what the tech bros did in the late 90s vis a vis live/work housing, and now there is basically no new live/work housing in San Francisco).

I currently work out of a WeWork lol (the co. I am working for part time is, for now, based here)

did you take all the snacks?