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The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

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Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#101

Post by CatWChainsaw »

First, ignore the boiling planet like a good frog, technology will solve all the problems technology caused if you just believe hard enough. Second, get high on the idea of hardcore Randian Objectivism because you're definitely just a temporarily embarrassed billionaire sitting on the next unicorn. Third, keep billions in poverty and precarity for your own ends/amusement before tossing them to die in the inevitable resource wars that will spread by 2040 (2030 imo).

/savedyouaclick

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#103

Post by nickpp »

jaybrendansmith wrote: post #70
Balladeer wrote: post #19

> Markets prevent monopolies and cartels. A lot of the optimism seems to rely on this statement and...I'm not convinced? But I also admit I'm not well informed on the topic. Does anyone have suggested reading on 'market discipline', as they're calling it? I mean, the first person on their "Patron Saints of Techno-Optimism" is Jeff Bezos, who is actively dealing with an antitrust lawsuit from the FTC regarding Amazon'…

I really want to love this manifesto. This is my one sticking point. Regulatory capture, monopolies, and cartels are the fatal flaw in this techno-optimism, and they break everything. Let's say I subscribe to this wonderful story Marc tells. Please tell me the purpose of government if it is not to destroy cartels and monopolies. They are every bit as bad as the government, which is a type of monopoly itself.

Point me to a resistant monopoly or cartel and I will show you a government granted/supported one. Free markets are naturally resistant through free competition (startups!) and, you know, laws.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#104

Post by pseudotrash »

onion2k wrote: post #25

For hundreds of years, we properly glorified this – until recently. We really didn't. At least, not at the time, and certainly not everyone. Plenty of people throughout history have been adamantly against the rapid progress of technology. The Luddites are the most famous group but there have been lots more. Even if you ignore those people for being frankly a bit weird, the driving force behind technology for the firs…

> and that will cause power over everyone to coalesce in the hands of a few people

"Alwsys has been Moon guy gets shot in the back" meme ...

seriously this has been documented over and over most prominently and especially in Jacques Ellul's "La Technique" https://archive.org/details/JacquesEllulTheTechnologicalSoci...

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#106

Post by flerovium »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #90
LindeBuzoGray wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. Land and air telecommunications are almost totally controlled by Verizon and AT&T. They are also some of the largest cable companies, although Comcast is a competitor. Although Comcast owns NBCUniversal, and we can start getting into the media monopoly. We can go through business by business and see the rise of monopolies and oligopolies. Universal owns half of the US music market - Universal, Sony and Warner…

What organization has a media monopoly? You have access to the internet, with which you can access media from individuals all the way up to multiple large corporations. On the national level, there are multiple sources of news (NYT/News Corp/Disney/Comcast/Paramount/WaPo/LATimes/etc). There are lots of sources of professionally and amateur produced entertainment. Apple/Amazon/Comcast/Disney/Sony/WarnerBrosDiscovery/P…

Ownership:

NYT - billionaire Sulzberger family

WaPo - Jeff Bezos

LA Times - billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong

Disney/Comcast/Paramount represent the consolidation of an industry that used to be hundreds of independent newsrooms into a dozen or so corporations. The murdoch family's New Corp is regularly analyzed as a political force on par with individual elected leaders, if not more so.

Entertainment: Apple/Amazon/Comcast/Disney/Sony/WarnerBrosDiscovery/Paramount

The problem is that the industry has consolidated into a number of players you can count on one hand.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#107

Post by BobbyJo »

shuckles wrote: post #16
BobbyJo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't buy a crappy house for less than 1mil in SV. The hackers are all on corporate payrolls.

You sure it isn’t because they just grew up, like the hippies?

By "grow up" do you mean "coalesce"? If so, that's exactly what I'm saying.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#108

Post by botswana99 »

greenie_beans wrote: post #98
botswana99 wrote: post #31

This is too full of Silicon Valley VC language. ugh Go to the source materials. - Rational Optimist. Matt Ridley - The Better Angels of Our Nature. Steve pinker - Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future. Johan Norberg - the capitalist manifesto: why the global free market will save the world. Norberg - Wizard and the prophet. Charles Mann - Factfulness. Hans rosling Or, just look at the data http://ourwor…

> the capitalist manifesto: why the global free market will save the world pretty crazy they'd put a fallacy in the title of their book

read the book.

Overall, since the 1990s total global inequality (inequality across all individuals in the world) declined ...

In 1990, 36% of the world's population lived in extreme poverty. By 2019, this number had fallen to 9.2%.

It's not a fallacy ... it's reality

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#109

Post by tech_ken »

onion2k wrote: post #25

For hundreds of years, we properly glorified this – until recently. We really didn't. At least, not at the time, and certainly not everyone. Plenty of people throughout history have been adamantly against the rapid progress of technology. The Luddites are the most famous group but there have been lots more. Even if you ignore those people for being frankly a bit weird, the driving force behind technology for the firs…

> the driving force behind technology for the first ten thousand or so years has been the improvement of the human race and to win in the struggle to survive

This seems naive to me (setting aside the issue of even defining or identifying "the driving force behind technology"). The Romans were famously engineering-minded and they certainly weren't doing it just for the improvement of the human condition; it had material and political consequences which they wanted to see realized. From my understanding of history this is true in pretty much any era and any location throughout history. Certainly there have always been people inventing new tools for the fun of it, or to improve their and others' lives, but it's not at all clear to me how you could show that the balance between these motivations has shifted so dramatically only in the last ~200 years. It seems far more plausible (to me) that technological development has always been a fulcrum for accumulation of wealth and power, and that our current moment is better explained as a shift in whose wealth and power is benefited (kings and emperors replaced by multinational corps and capital owners), rather than a complete reorientation of the nature of technology itself.

Re: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

#110

Post by klntsky »

> We believe the techno-capital machine is not anti-human – in fact, it may be the most pro-human thing there is. It serves us. The techno-capital machine works for us. All the machines work for us.

This assumes that only human agency is possible, I doubt that.

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