If we trust the prophets of techno-optimism, Silicon Valley will deliver a future of wonders far beyond what we could ever imagine. (View Highlight)
Fifteen years ago, this might have been a compelling pitch — indeed, a less megalomaniacal version was all the rage. Coming out of the Great Recession, the tech industry promised us convenience, prosperity, and empowerment. The smartphone revolution, the rise of the gig — I mean, sharing — economy, and all the other tech wonders like self-driving cars and advanced AI were going to irreversibly transform society for the benefit of all. But it didn’t play out as they claimed. (View Highlight)
Inequality soared, life became more precarious, and bosses used tech to disempower workers, all while the kings of Silicon Valley became billionaires many times over and began to believe their riches were due to their inherent superiority, not the mix of privilege and dumb luck that really got them there. It should come as no surprise that the tide eventually turned on them and their companies. (View Highlight)
Now they feel aggrieved and they’re back to make similar promises all over again, but this time instead of an open hand, they’ve extended a fist with the threat that if we don’t accept their future, there will be hell to pay. For Andreessen and his effective accelerationist (or e/acc) buddies, you have to choose: you’re either a techno-optimist who won’t question the faith, or you’re one of their enemies: the Communist boogeymen, the rising neo-Luddites, or the wider array of decels (decelerationists) arrayed to stop a supposedly better future from being realized. But the future they want to create is one we should all want to stop. (View Highlight)
In the Techno-Optimist Manifesto, Andreessen doubles down on Silicon Valley’s ideological view that a better future will be realized through technological advance guided by market forces rather than government intervention. Don’t look at the problems our companies have caused, he argues, train your eyes on the wonderful future we’re on the cusp of building. It’s the usual deception being revived once again to distract from present-day harms with promises of future prosperity, or eventual salvation. (View Highlight)
By now most people should remember that Silicon Valley itself was borne of war, not peace. Its work has long been funded by the US government and particularly the Department of Defense to develop new technologies to aid the war effort and maintain American power across the globe. It’s only later that private companies rebrand that tech for the corporate and consumer markets. In Palo Alto, Malcolm Harris explained how the first generation of silicon transistors to emerge from the Valley went into Minuteman 1 missiles which were used to threaten the world with nuclear annihilation, and as I write this, the Israeli government is using AI to vastly increase its targets across the Gaza Strip, causing unimaginable death and destruction. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. (View Highlight)
Despite their promise of economic miracles, the tech industry has not fueled a productivity explosion as their language would often suggest. They promised AI and robots would wipe out an unprecedented number of jobs through the 2010s, but that didn’t ultimately happen. Instead digital technologies were weaponized by bosses against workers at companies like Amazon and Uber before rolling out across the economy, while productivity grew at its lowest rate in decades. Don’t even get me started on the distraction caused by social media and our smartphones, filled with apps designed to capture our attention with constant minor dopamine hits. (View Highlight)
Andreessen is not making a pitch grounded in reality. He’s not laying out facts and figures to show you why you should trust him because the truth doesn’t matter. It’s more about vibes. He’s asking techno-optimists, e/acc adherents, and the wider public to place their faith in the barons of the tech industry to solve the problems that politicians and other powerful figures can’t seem to properly address, while making up false reasons that justify granting them further power. (View Highlight)
Silicon Valley has made faith-based appeals for years, if not decades. Efforts to realize transhumanism, the singularity, and the idea of the god-like AI we’ve been hearing about for the past year often feel more like religions than commercial pursuits. Steve Jobs was an expert at using faith as a marketing tactic, making the glowing Apple logo akin to a religious symbol and himself a tech deity by the time of his death. But Andreessen’s invocation of faith feels like more of a threat. He’s not trying to sell you a bunch of tech trash; he wants you to accept a worldview that justifies the power of tech billionaires. (View Highlight)
We believe, we believe, we believe, he writes over and over again, and expects his reader to believe it too. He believes growth is progress and lifts people out of poverty, despite the growing hardship being experienced across the world. He believes technological progress leads to material abundance for everyone, as the tech industry continues the process of erecting barriers to things that were previously free or shared. (View Highlight)
The connection between tech and religion is nothing new. “Modern technology and modern faith are neither complements nor opposites, nor do they represent succeeding stages of human development,” wrote David Noble in his 1997 book The Religion of Technology. “They are merged, and always have been, the technological enterprise being, at the same time, an essentially religious endeavor.” This may feel like an affront to some people — technology and the empiricism associated with it are supposed to be the complete opposite of religion, they might say. But through the course of his book, Noble effectively outlines the deep links between the two, from the long connection between technology and millenarianism to the role various religious orders played in fostering rather than hindering technological pursuits. (View Highlight)
Noble skewers not just how the industry uses faith toward its own ends, but the many people around it who buy into and echo the narratives about wonderful futures to distract from real harms. Today, as there’s a growing movement demanding the drawbacks of tech be considered and addressed, it’s no wonder tech billionaires are pushing back even more forcefully. (View Highlight)
