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What the fuck happened to nerds

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Re: What the fuck happened to nerds

#21

Post by plastic-enjoyer »

mc32 wrote: post #7
smrtinsert wrote: post #3

100% agreed. I saw it somewhere else that the tech industry has burned all the transformative good will it had earned over the years and is now seen as the key villain in joblessness, societal discord and loneliness. What the fuck did happen? Edit: this isn't just an old man thing, this is the new generation saying this

To be terse but generalizing a bit, technologists used to want to solve problems and make things easier. At some point, under the influence of MBAs it became how do we make loads of money leveraging technology’s network effects?

I think that technologists are doing themselves a disservice by blaming the problems within their industry on MBAs. Many of the problems we see in the tech industry, and the reason why public opinion is not exactly positive, are primarily due to ideological factors. Whether you call it Californian ideology or whatever, many people in the tech industry think only in terms of efficiency and value. And if something isn’t efficient or doesn’t add value, it should be streamlined away and made obsolete, whether it be systems, processes, markets - or humans.

Re: What the fuck happened to nerds

#23

Post by bob001 »

TrackerFF wrote: post #18

Money and power corrupts, that’s what you need to know.

Money attracts those who seek money and those who seek money for the sake of money will as one would expect prioritize money above other things such as ethics as there is a natural feedback loop there.

Re: What the fuck happened to nerds

#24

Post by jmclnx »

nerds stopped existing around the 1990s when money was poring into tech. The bros moved from marketing into tech for the money, pushing out nerds. An example of this is all the bloatware being created.

Yes some still exist, but I think the tend to be working in non-tech jobs or maybe in Corp IT and working on their own items in between.

Re: What the fuck happened to nerds

#25

Post by nathan_compton »

andrenotgiant wrote: post #20

I have an imperfect "canary in the coalmine" test for whether/where the principled/idealist nerds have the power vs the mercenary/cynical nerds have the power: Advertisers vs Ad Blockers - as long as the Ad Blockers are blocking the vast majority of junk, I feel like team principles is winning. Like they have more nerd power to outsmart the lesser nerds working on team mercenary. But there are places like Facebook wh…

I would happily, delightedly, see the entire internet disappear in a puff of smoke, to remove ads from the world. Honestly, I'd be happy to see everything on the internet except the wikipedia vanish regardless, at this point.

Re: What the fuck happened to nerds

#27

Post by jmyeet »

This misses what happened entirely.

What happened is that tech companies got so large that they are now essentially defense contractors. You can't both be a countercultural rebel, the kind who would evoke 1984 in a TV ad, and be a CEO and/or significant owner in a trillion dollar company.

At some point, the company's interests align with domestic and foreign policy and the company becomes a tool of the state, which is interesting because that's the accusation levelled at Chinese companies but it's exactly what Google, Meta, Microsoft, SpaceX, Tesla, Amazon, etc have become. They're deeply entwined with government contracts and defense that alignment is impossible to avoid.

You saw this as Tim Apple [sic], Sundai Pichai, Sergey Brin, Elon Musk and Sam Altman all bent the knee at the last inauguration. All of them paid 7 figures to be there.

Idealism, disruption, etc are fundamentally incompatible with being a multi-billionaire.

Re: What the fuck happened to nerds

#28

Post by taeric »

I could similarly ask what happened to journalists? Or the politician that cared about their stated principals.

The reality isn't even that they went away, necessarily. Or that it was all a lie. There were always exceptions and it always took some level of good faith between our different institutions to keep them working well. At some point, that good faith interaction got hijacked and it has quickly spread as a rot to all things.

Re: What the fuck happened to nerds

#29

Post by mrhottakes »

dieselgate wrote: post #9
plastic-enjoyer wrote: post #6

>Charming nerd to terrifying overlord If there was this shift, it was always superficial. To a certain degree, nerds were always 'terrifying overlords'. It’s just that once they accumulated enough power, there was no longer any point in maintaining that façade

The "Revenge of the Nerds" movie series follows this arc too - when them being oppressed to becoming the oppressors.

Yep, even just in the first movie: as soon as the chief nerd has a chance, he assaults one of the jock's girlfriends.

Re: What the fuck happened to nerds

#30

Post by mrhottakes »

plastic-enjoyer wrote: post #21
mc32 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be terse but generalizing a bit, technologists used to want to solve problems and make things easier. At some point, under the influence of MBAs it became how do we make loads of money leveraging technology’s network effects?

I think that technologists are doing themselves a disservice by blaming the problems within their industry on MBAs. Many of the problems we see in the tech industry, and the reason why public opinion is not exactly positive, are primarily due to ideological factors. Whether you call it Californian ideology or whatever, many people in the tech industry think only in terms of efficiency and value. And if something isn’…

Yep. You can try blaming it on MBAs, but the people that did this (e.g. Ellison, Andreessen, Musk, Zuck, and so on) are not MBAs.
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