Don't Be Evil: Utopias, Frontiers, and Brogrammers
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Re: Don't Be Evil: Utopias, Frontiers, and Brogrammers
#2The "anti-political" part is probably the most pertinent to modern tech thought. People repeat it here as well - the idea that any kind of specification or statistic is just cold and hard, and there are no lenses.
What I wonder more is: is it a product of the "build it" mentality like Turner says, or is it manipulated by money men with an interest is maintaining the status quo by silencing dissent as non-scientific?
Re: Don't Be Evil: Utopias, Frontiers, and Brogrammers
#3The "anti-political" part is probably the most pertinent to modern tech thought. People repeat it here as well - the idea that any kind of specification or statistic is just cold and hard, and there are no lenses. What I wonder more is: is it a product of the "build it" mentality like Turner says, or is it manipulated by money men with an interest is maintaining the status quo by silencing dissent as non-scientific?
It's both. It wouldn't be so rhetorically useful to the latter if the former weren't repeatedly knocking out runaway success stories.
Re: Don't Be Evil: Utopias, Frontiers, and Brogrammers
#4The "anti-political" part is probably the most pertinent to modern tech thought. People repeat it here as well - the idea that any kind of specification or statistic is just cold and hard, and there are no lenses. What I wonder more is: is it a product of the "build it" mentality like Turner says, or is it manipulated by money men with an interest is maintaining the status quo by silencing dissent as non-scientific?
It's both. It wouldn't be so rhetorically useful to the latter if the former weren't repeatedly knocking out runaway success stories.
But the former don't repeatedly knock out runaway success stories.
Runaway success stories are incredibly rare. Worse, the people who are most famous for achieving them rarely appear particularly sympathetic or humane.
Edit to add: that was a great read, IMO - unusually interesting and insightful.
Re: Don't Be Evil: Utopias, Frontiers, and Brogrammers
#5The lines about engineers I find to be odd. I don't believe that an entire culture could think that way, yet the author states that the news is a out of context problem for these firms. Engineers don't actually think like that as this article claims it to be, right?
Re: Don't Be Evil: Utopias, Frontiers, and Brogrammers
#6This is one of the more insightful and interesting reads posted on HN.
I took issue with the statement that Apple have always cynically coopted counterculture and utopian motifs. Then I thought about it for a second.
Getting people pumped up about Apple using utopian imagery and counterculture suggestions was always cynical. It just happened to work very effectively on me in the 80s, and may very well have fuelled a lot of my early life's optimism. In particular my faith that certain tech/companies were inherently good. I was certainly a big fan of Apple for many years.
If that naivety hadn't already faded significantly, this may have been a more severe reaction, than ... Hey wait!? ... Oh right!
Obviously Steve had already exploited and cheated Woz on a number of occasions before the formative Mac 1984 Ads (which made a deep impression on me at the time.) So it's not that much of a reach to say they are somewhat cynical.
Jobs is a very interesting person, specifically because I think he bought a lot of his own bullshit. Possibly his LSD experience was something which led to deep understanding of humans and interpersonal politics, which may have led to him developing his reality distortions field... Who knows. He may also have developed the classic [1]Acid Jesus Messianic complex and as a result we have the enigma we are left with in the public memory of Jobs. Millions who believe he was an agent of change and a tech god. While many many, who look deeper at the man think he's quite the piece of (edit for politeness) work.
Speculation on this is ultimately pointless... but it's something I muse about myself.
Re: Don't Be Evil: Utopias, Frontiers, and Brogrammers
#7The first bit about communes reminded me of The Tyranny of Structurelessness [0]. It has far reaching corollaries.
Re: Don't Be Evil: Utopias, Frontiers, and Brogrammers
#8This is one of the more insightful and interesting reads posted on HN. I took issue with the statement that Apple have always cynically coopted counterculture and utopian motifs. Then I thought about it for a second. Getting people pumped up about Apple using utopian imagery and counterculture suggestions was always cynical. It just happened to work very effectively on me in the 80s, and may very well have fuelled a…
From what I have read, there are quite a few people (including Woz) that recognize that Steve Jobs was still a great man, despite the way how he treated people sometimes.
Steve Jobs was very charismatic and often it’s charismatic people that lead the charge.
One can be an agent of change and a tech god, while also being a piece of work. The one doesn’t exclude the other.
Einstein treated his wife quite horrible as well, but despite this, he was still a genious.
Re: Don't Be Evil: Utopias, Frontiers, and Brogrammers
#9"Infrastructure is not political" is part of the canon here on HN as well. Bitcoin, as one of many examples, is often touted as being "neutral", or "unbiased" (in comparison to the Federal Reserve's monetary policy).
The same sort of argument is gaining steam around discriminatory decisions by AI or "Big Data" systems: "It's an algorithm! It cannot be biased. Technology is neutral!"
Re: Don't Be Evil: Utopias, Frontiers, and Brogrammers
#10This is one of the more insightful and interesting reads posted on HN. I took issue with the statement that Apple have always cynically coopted counterculture and utopian motifs. Then I thought about it for a second. Getting people pumped up about Apple using utopian imagery and counterculture suggestions was always cynical. It just happened to work very effectively on me in the 80s, and may very well have fuelled a…
I think a discussion on Steve Jobs' morality is among the least productive uses of this excellent essay.
Yet I'll add that people are complicated. In terms of his accomplishments, it is undeniable that Jobs was a force for good. As for his motives and methods, I have no trouble believing that Jobs (and the vast majority at Apple) used the image of counterculture in good faith, even while they changed it into a sort of hollowed-out version streamlined for capitalism.
Yet there are some positive strains of this myth Apple created that have an impact on them until today: the willingness to focus on small segments of the market or to quickly abandon legacy technology come to mind. Their affinity to the arts and humanities is also still palpable, and certain political decisions, such as their willingness to invest in clean technology or to support the LGBTQ community also seem to be rooted in spirit of the revolutions in the 60s.