This redaction is great. I would contrast Andreeson's techno-optimism against Power and Progress by Acemoglu and Johnson. In short, whether a given piece of technology actually improves human life...
Exemplary
This redaction is great. I would contrast Andreeson's techno-optimism against Power and Progress by Acemoglu and Johnson. In short, whether a given piece of technology actually improves human life has more to do with society and culture than it does the nature of the technology itself. Technology as often as not actually decreases quality of life. The earliest agricultural communities saw far lower lifespans and health than their nomads of the same era. Medieval developments of the plow and crop rotation occurred concurrently with declines in quality of life of Europe's peasantry, as all surplus was hoarded by the nobility and clergy. The early industrial revolution saw mass displacement and technological unemployment, as skilled weavers and crafters were made obsolete en masse.
The early industrial looms are a great example. In theory, mechanizing weaving need not have lowered the quality of life of those working in the industry. Existing weavers could have remained employed as weavers, and the vastly increased production could have simply allowed them to sell products for lower prices, thus increasing demand. Wages could have been fair and the workers retain their dignity. That of course did not happen. Instead of weavers working at home in their village cottages, they were forced to move to crowded industrial cities, pay usurious rents, and work dangerous, humiliating jobs with no labor protections and unthinkably long work days. In the countryside, the enclosure movement in England, justified on grounds of technological efficiency and scientific principles, drove people off their common land and stripped them of their ancient common land rights. Land could have been enclosed in a way that still allowed the previous holders of common land rights to retain the material gain of these lands, but that wasn't done. Instead the land was sold off to the wealthy and mass displacement followed.
Or, in modern times, for all the increased technology we've had over the last 20 years, has quality of life really improved? Has the common man actually seen an increase in quality of life, a lowering of work hours, an increase in dignity, anything? Or have all the benefits of new technology been siphoned upwards, enriching the wealthy at the expense of everyone else? Or look at what now seems the very failed experiment of mass automobile culture. Now our cities are collapsing fiscally because we let them spread out so thin that they're not financially viable anymore; they can't pay for their own infrastructure. If we had used cars largely only outside of cities, and within cities kept things walkable and based on public transit, we would be in a lot better place now. But we went all in, blindly embracing the new technology of the automobile, and look where it brought us.
Now companies are pouring billions into self-driving cars, but no serious governmental action is being taken to address their downsides. They're under-regulated and allowed to self-report shady safety statistics. And even if they do succeed, there is, and likely never will, be any plan for dealing with the millions of workers true driverless cars would displace. We're also not thinking about how driverless cars would further increase urban sprawl, and the types of road uses driverless cars would allow. Automated billboards that wander the streets aimlessly would become much cheaper to operate. Currently cities keep people from living on the public roads through parking requirements. But if my RV can drive itself, maybe it will be possible to skip rent and just live in a mobile apartment that slowly crawls around city streets all night, avoiding ever having to park at all. And there's no policy being considered to address the effects of wealth concentration.
Technology can improve human life, but we have a very, very poor track record of managing these transitions. Often it's precisely techno-optimistic attitudes that prevent us from properly shepherding in new technologies, as it's just assumed that everything will work out in the end. And on a very long term, that is true. Wait long enough and everyone displaced by driverless cars will find other work or simply die in the gutter. Historically, in societies where the wealthy control the political discourse and wealth is highly concentrated, technological improvements tend to lower quality of life for the vast majority of the populace. And our society isn't exactly one with an ethical distribution of wealth and power.
I think you might be too optimistic about how much technological change can be understood in advance and controlled. The psychohistorians from Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series don’t and can’t...
I think you might be too optimistic about how much technological change can be understood in advance and controlled. The psychohistorians from Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series don’t and can’t exist. Life is an uncontrolled experiment. The techno-optimists don’t know the future but neither do we. Predicting the downstream effects of a new technology and whether it will turn out to be net-positive seems about as difficult as predicting the future in general.
Thinking ahead is still a good idea, but it’s going to be tentative thinking about possible scenarios. Much of what we would need to know to regulate technology effectively can only be learned by using it extensively in real-world conditions.
The rollout of self-driving cars is being done much more cautiously than previous transportation technologies because we are a lot more wary than our ancestors were. From a modern perspective, they were extraordinarily reckless when trains and cars and airplanes were invented. Life was cheap back then.
Our high standards about safety are a major reason why companies need to put billions into developing new transportation technologies. These projects are so large that some kind of wealth concentration (public or private) is a prerequisite.
I'd like to offer a counterpoint to the discussion if I may. Twenty years is indeed an intriguing timeframe. I, too, believe we haven't experienced enough significant innovation in the last 20...
I'd like to offer a counterpoint to the discussion if I may.
Or, in modern times, for all the increased technology we've had over the last 20 years, has quality of life really improved? Has the common man actually seen an increase in quality of life, a lowering of work hours, an increase in dignity, anything?
Twenty years is indeed an intriguing timeframe. I, too, believe we haven't experienced enough significant innovation in the last 20 years. Many of our basic institutions and ways of life remain largely unchanged, with perhaps the exception of the rise in remote work. Nevertheless, I'd venture to say that the majority of people, if given the choice, wouldn't opt to travel back in time devoid of today's technology. Be it 20 years, 40 years, 80 years, or 160 years ago, I surmise that most individuals would rather experience day-to-day life with current tech than without it in the past.
On another note, is there really anything stopping individuals from living without modern technology? There are indeed individuals who consciously decide to trade their smartphones for flip phones or embrace an off-grid lifestyle. However, I believe the majority refrain from doing so because they value the conveniences of modern communication, medicine, cooking, housing, and entertainment.
Or look at what now seems the very failed experiment of mass automobile culture. Now our cities are collapsing fiscally because we led them spread out so thin that they're financially viable anymore; they can't pay for their own infrastructure. If we had used cars largely only outside of cities, and within cities kept things walkable and based on public transit, we would be in a lot better place now. But we went all in, blindly embracing the new technology of the automobile, and look where it brought us.
Could this issue not be attributed to a city's inability to adapt and efficiently manage its resources? I concur that many US cities struggle with fiscal responsibility—facing extended timelines and costs often ballooning to several times the initial budget. However, if people are driving into a city, they likely don't wish to complete the final leg of their journey on foot or by public transit. Moreover, without a car in the city, venturing beyond public transit limits becomes a challenge, especially when traveling with baggage.
Regarding the distribution of wealth and power, I contend that, due to economic and fiscal policies combined with inflation, our purchasing power feels diminished, especially in sectors like housing, medicine, and education. Yet, doesn't it feel as if our potential to amass wealth and wield power today is greater than during our grandparents' era? This same sentiment might have been true for them as well. Nevertheless, I concur that we all should possess more wealth and power.
To sum up, has technology genuinely not benefited the majority? And for those who've opted out of the technological advancements, wasn't that decision within their agency?
That's a false assumption - if people are mostly driving into a city, then that usually means that the city's road infrastructure is better (e.g. faster) than their public transport. This is...
However, if people are driving into a city, they likely don't wish to complete the final leg of their journey on foot or by public transit.
That's a false assumption - if people are mostly driving into a city, then that usually means that the city's road infrastructure is better (e.g. faster) than their public transport. This is despite public transport being fundamentally capable of far more throughput at far lower cost.
Could this issue not be attributed to a city's inability to adapt and efficiently manage its resources?
Who is "a city", though? Why are the vast majority of cities all coincidentally making the same mistake during the same period? This isn't a problem of incompetence, it's a problem of narrative - a narrative that has been extensively constructed by car companies, all the way back since they invented the term "jaywalking" in their PR campaign to blame parents for their kids being killed by motorists.
I mean, I think both can be true. Having worked in two different cities, for two different companies, the response from employees is the same when their parking is shifted even to just the other...
That's a false assumption - if people are mostly driving into a city, then that usually means that the city's road infrastructure is better (e.g. faster) than their public transport.
I mean, I think both can be true. Having worked in two different cities, for two different companies, the response from employees is the same when their parking is shifted even to just the other side of the building (and worse when it's just across the street ), that is, negative and disgruntled. Add that I'm in an area that gets freezing in the winter, folks don't seem to like having the distance between their warm car and the door to their building increased, they want it decreased. Now, there might be a hybrid approach, as I think a literal tube that picks you up at home and drops you off directly at work would be fantastic as well.
‘Apologies I can’t quote your text to respond due to the (very early build) app that I use to browse tildes, so I’ll try to respond with one paragraph per paragraph in your comment, in order. I...
‘Apologies I can’t quote your text to respond due to the (very early build) app that I use to browse tildes, so I’ll try to respond with one paragraph per paragraph in your comment, in order.
I think this graph speaks volumes, though I admit that’s probably because I already agree with the underlying assumption. Perhaps this graph could be considered misleading or dishonest to someone whose worldview is at odds with mine.
I think the question of individuals choosing to opt out of recent technological advances is answered by the same case in the Industrial Revolution: sure, that weaver who spent a lifetime developing their skills can choose to ignore the mechanical loom and keep doing what they’re doing, but there’s no chance they can genuinely keep participating in society when their output from weeks of skilled labour is replaced by a few days of dangerous work from the 16 year old boy working 14 hour shifts. Is that boy’s output paid at a rate that reflects the higher output? Certainly not, that extra value goes to the pockets of the people at the top, and everyone else misses out. Likewise in the modern world, leaps and bounds in digital workspaces have meant that output for any information-based job has skyrocketed but salary hasn’t kept up in a meaningful way.
If city finances were due to mismanagement, I’d expect that only a small number of cities would be under financial hardship and some would be thriving, but instead there’s a nation-wide downturn which doesn’t seem related to local government corruption.
As to wealth distribution compared to our grandparents, I’ve heard that at least in USA, there has been a measurable decline in wealth relative to our parents for the first time in a century, maybe more given the lack of historical records.
I'll play the role of 'someone' here and assert that a major likely factor in the divergence of productivity and earnings in the early 1970s (among many other trends) was the suspension of the...
I think this graph speaks volumes, though I admit that’s probably because I already agree with the underlying assumption. Perhaps this graph could be considered misleading or dishonest to someone whose worldview is at odds with mine.
I'll play the role of 'someone' here and assert that a major likely factor in the divergence of productivity and earnings in the early 1970s (among many other trends) was the suspension of the Bretton Woods financial exchange system and the resultant conversion of the US dollar to a fiat currency. Frankly, it irks me that so many people overlook as a potential cause for the various failures of the US market economy the notion that the dollar is now basically a meaningless concept.
If the federal reserve can print limitless amounts of money, then money no longer really represents value, and a market economy cannot function effectively under that condition. This isn't to say that the gold standard was perfect - but fiat currency was the absolute worst alternative to it.
The whole topic seems like a massive blind spot in the typical critiques of capitalism or techno-utopianism or whatever. The flaws of fiat currency dovetail nicely with many of capitalism's most egregious acts - bailouts of huge, irresponsible banks, for instance, are accomplished by summoning money out of nowhere and giving it directly to the rich. Similarly, debased currency tends towards inflation, and only those rich enough to afford large amounts of equities or real estate or other inflation-resistant assets can really even hold on to their money. Yet even though these explanations are compelling, most people left of center are hesitant to discuss them because they make corruption and oligopoly seem less an inevitable result of free markets and more the result of the government's economic mismanagement.
I agree with this. I don't think corruption is involved, but I think incentives are not aligned, resources are poorly managed, and bureaucracy eats at spending efficiency. Big cities are spending...
doesn’t seem related to local government corruption
I agree with this. I don't think corruption is involved, but I think incentives are not aligned, resources are poorly managed, and bureaucracy eats at spending efficiency. Big cities are spending enormous amounts of time and money on simple things, 20 years just to open a bathroom, and have so much red tape that they ended up with a bus stop shade that didn't work. More examples of things we did fast and now do slow here: https://patrickcollison.com/fast
There has been a measurable decline in wealth relative to our parents for the first time in a century
Depends on the generational timeframe one is looking at, but a lot of parents had decent paying jobs during an era of zero or low Federal interest rates and QE. Parents were religiously putting a small percentage of the paycheck into some index funds, and the Fed was buying up those funds, so parents had wealth! But I would argue that QE, ETFs, index funds etc are in and of themselves financial technologies which the original techno-optimism essay basically praises.
Now, things got a little off the rails. Real disposable income was at historic highs, inflation got too hot, too many people bought houses at historically low interest rates, and national public debt is at all time highs (32 Trillion Dollars) so the Fed is making it expensive for businesses to borrow. The era of free money that our parents had is basically over until something breaks. But still, I'm optimistic that even though the dollar is harder to get now than it was a few years ago, technological leverage will compensate for that (in the meantime, I can communicate with strangers all around the world while ordering whatever I need to my home, playing almost any game or reading almost any book, listening to almost any song, and getting vaccinated for a plethora of diseases.)
Here is a full source of the graph you linked with data up until last year, for reference. And here and here are sites with charts and information about the generational wealth gap (only up until...
Here is a full source of the graph you linked with data up until last year, for reference.
And here and here are sites with charts and information about the generational wealth gap (only up until 2020 and 2021, respectively).
I think you are broadly correct, but as someone who yearns to live a simple, off-grid, self sufficient life close to nature, it really isn't that simple, at least where I live (southern England)....
There are indeed individuals who consciously decide to trade their smartphones for flip phones or embrace an off-grid lifestyle. However, I believe the majority refrain from doing so because they value the conveniences of modern communication, medicine, cooking, housing, and entertainment.
I think you are broadly correct, but as someone who yearns to live a simple, off-grid, self sufficient life close to nature, it really isn't that simple, at least where I live (southern England). You have to have a certain amount of wealth up-front to achieve this, for example to buy land, and then there are factors such as proximity to family which limit options. It's certainly out of my reach at the moment and I am lucky enough to earn well above average.
Love that quote. In another comment in this thread, someone mentioned that we can't predict the future and what impacts new techs will have. But it's not that we only fail to plan for the...
Love that quote. In another comment in this thread, someone mentioned that we can't predict the future and what impacts new techs will have. But it's not that we only fail to plan for the unpredictable impacts of technology. In our current system, we fail to deal with the fully foreseeable and obvious impacts of technology. Once again, driverless cars are a great example. I can't really right now predict quantitatively their mass adoption would have on urban sprawl. The examples I cited would increase urban sprawl, but others might decrease it. If we all shift to automated taxis, then we can scrap most urban parking, store the taxis on exurban parking lots at night, and actually reduce urban sprawl. Some effects are complex and hard to predict, so we can be forgiven for not planning for them.
But in the driverless car example, we're not even planning any system to help those inevitably effected, the drivers themselves. Losing drivers isn't a side effect of the technology; it's the primary purpose. If your "driverless car" still needs a paid driver, there's no point making it driverless. And yet truck driver, taxi driver, etc are some of the largest employment categories in the nation. And they're one of the few ways we still have for people without much formal education to earn a living. A CDL takes some getting, but it's a lot easier than going through an undergrad degree. What's the plan to help these people? There is no state or federal program to help these millions of workers if their entire industry is made obsolete. We're just blindly pushing forward, content to let millions be impoverished while Silicon Valley sucks up more of our economy.
Totally feel this! Here in Metro Manila for example, the govt still prefers to deal with bad traffic by doing road widening projects instead of drastically improving public transport 🤷🏻♀️ And I...
But it's not that we only fail to plan for the unpredictable impacts of technology. In our current system, we fail to deal with the fully foreseeable and obvious impacts of technology.
Totally feel this! Here in Metro Manila for example, the govt still prefers to deal with bad traffic by doing road widening projects instead of drastically improving public transport 🤷🏻♀️ And I don't think it's because they "don't know better" or "can't predict the impacts", they're just not motivated to serve the interests of the marginalized (the majority of the population, lower middle class and below).
This specific point sounds kind of cool. Down with renting. Let the self-driving machines give you freedom on the road.
if my RV can drive itself, maybe it will be possible to skip rent and just live in a mobile apartment that slowly crawls around city streets all night, avoiding ever having to park at all
This specific point sounds kind of cool. Down with renting. Let the self-driving machines give you freedom on the road.
Our cities are already going bankrupt because low-density suburban sprawl doesn't generate enough tax revenue to cover its maintenance costs. Whether you own a home or rent, you still contribute...
Our cities are already going bankrupt because low-density suburban sprawl doesn't generate enough tax revenue to cover its maintenance costs. Whether you own a home or rent, you still contribute to the local property taxes, directly or indirectly. And again, there's the major problem with traffic. Self-driving cars make a lot more traffic possible, resulting in even more clogged and crumbling roads.
The original manifesto reads like a screed from someone who's never left their ivory tower. There are countless example of technology being utterly horrific for humans, both in the short run and...
Exemplary
The original manifesto reads like a screed from someone who's never left their ivory tower. There are countless example of technology being utterly horrific for humans, both in the short run and the long run. Most society-level problems are not technical in nature as much as they are political or cultural problems. I guess this is where he'd cut me off and say "technology will fix that!".
Techno-optimism, as laid out by this manifesto, is great if you ignore everything that happens between now and the fantasy hypothesized for the future. Techno-optimism is great if you're wealthy. Techno-optimism is great if you're not a victim of technology (which is such a broad term that it can refer to essentially everything humans have invented from life-saving drugs to nuclear weapons).
Layer in the dog whistles every other paragraph, wild suppositions, statements as fact, and you get a few thousand words that, well, boil down to what is found in the linked redaction.
There's a rather appealing takedown essay from Dave Karpf here. It's not a scholarly, heavily cited analysis of the anarchocapitalist assumptions that Andreeson alludes to. But it's a fine...
Exemplary
There's a rather appealing takedown essay from Dave Karpf here. It's not a scholarly, heavily cited analysis of the anarchocapitalist assumptions that Andreeson alludes to. But it's a fine historical pastiche of exactly what resulted from more or less giving Andreeson and his ilk what they demanded for the past 30 years.
We can talk about market failures in technologies like vaccines (where there was dire underinvestment for decades because no one could figure out 10x profits), transportation (where there was dire underinvestment because no one could figure out how to make more money except through oligopoly and market consolidation, until Elon Musk leveraged public subsidies)...
The manifesto is a celebration of the special public carveouts received by a tiny, influential crowd that have become the new rentiers, binging on intellectual property and network ownership revenues. Genuine innovation is immaterial or threatening to them unless they're able to profit, and I'd love to see the bunch of them taxed sufficiently to drown their politics in a bathtub.
I'm so tired of technology being used to justify market exploitation. Being used for propaganda. That is no such "techno optimism". The antithesis if anything. They deliberately substitute "free...
I'm so tired of technology being used to justify market exploitation. Being used for propaganda. That is no such "techno optimism". The antithesis if anything.
They deliberately substitute "free market" with technology rendering good faith discourse impossible. They win by default in forcing their opponent to debate the merits of technology instead of their unfettered exploits of "free markets". It's technically true that machines do math faster than humans. Such technical truths are not what's up for debate.
I guess it's fitting these guys have built so called digital "town squares" that don't work fuck all. They're overrun with the same kind of bad faith discourse which are the embodiment of themselves. So what chance will they ever make decent platforms. One cannot build and operate something they fundamentally don't believe in. We will continue to see bastardizations of technology until it's free from the grips of people like Andreessen and Horowitz.
Eugh why did they feel the need to write this? Its just an out of touch tech billionaire’s love letter to capitalism and the kind of silicon valley tech bro “progress”. Seriously: What a self...
Eugh why did they feel the need to write this? Its just an out of touch tech billionaire’s love letter to capitalism and the kind of silicon valley tech bro “progress”.
Seriously:
We believe there is no conflict between capitalist profits and a social welfare system that protects the vulnerable
What a self indulgent clown man the author is.
The more I read the more its clear this is like their babys first political and economic discourse it’s so absolute and lacking nuance that it would be comical if it wasn’t terrifying that many will read this bullshit and agree with some of it.
The screaming irony of this paragraph written by fucking venture capitalists:
Our enemy is the ivory tower, the know-it-all credentialed expert worldview, indulging in abstract theories, luxury beliefs, social engineering, disconnected from the real world, delusional, unelected, and unaccountable – playing God with everyone else’s lives, with total insulation from the consequences.
Meta: I’m sad this was posted on tildes, we’re all dumber and more bankrupt in every human way, having been subjected to this awful awful ideology.
There is already someone lower in the comments linking to the full version and saying it's "so good" so... suffice it to say I think some people might be missing the parody. Or deliberately...
There is already someone lower in the comments linking to the full version and saying it's "so good" so... suffice it to say I think some people might be missing the parody. Or deliberately dodging it.
That was me, just excited to see discussion happening around this essay which I thought was fantastic. But it was interesting to see that I was in the minority of people who liked the ode to...
That was me, just excited to see discussion happening around this essay which I thought was fantastic. But it was interesting to see that I was in the minority of people who liked the ode to techno-optimism on this website (ironically built with literal technology.) Strangely, my views are unchanged, though. I think life is better because of technological advancements, and at the same time held back because of technological cynicism.
I acknowledge and empathize with the other perspectives, though, because I once held them. In my younger years, I was extremely cynical. I saw the bad more than the good, and when the bad wasn't there, I filled in the blanks. But I've noticed that as my counterparts grew more resentful of technology, I've been growing more optimistic. There's not a single time in the past that I'd rather live in, and I only wish for the future to arrive sooner.
Maybe I am dumber and more bankrupt because of it, even naive or perhaps intellectually compromised, but thats rather unknowable I suppose, subjective at best.
I think life is indeed better because of technological advancement. But that doesn't mean that I support the Manifesto's "remove all regulation and ethics and risk assessment because these hinder...
I think life is better because of technological advancements, and at the same time held back because of technological cynicism.
I think life is indeed better because of technological advancement. But that doesn't mean that I support the Manifesto's "remove all regulation and ethics and risk assessment because these hinder progress and capitalism is actually going to incentivize good behavior anyway" perspective. I think we have an absolute boatload of evidence from the not-very-distant past showing that this perspective is deeply flawed, and I don't think it's fair to call the counterpoint of "technological progress can cause problems if we don't do our best to consider how to mitigate risks and ethical issues" too cynical. It's pragmatic, if anything.
This redaction is great. I would contrast Andreeson's techno-optimism against Power and Progress by Acemoglu and Johnson. In short, whether a given piece of technology actually improves human life has more to do with society and culture than it does the nature of the technology itself. Technology as often as not actually decreases quality of life. The earliest agricultural communities saw far lower lifespans and health than their nomads of the same era. Medieval developments of the plow and crop rotation occurred concurrently with declines in quality of life of Europe's peasantry, as all surplus was hoarded by the nobility and clergy. The early industrial revolution saw mass displacement and technological unemployment, as skilled weavers and crafters were made obsolete en masse.
The early industrial looms are a great example. In theory, mechanizing weaving need not have lowered the quality of life of those working in the industry. Existing weavers could have remained employed as weavers, and the vastly increased production could have simply allowed them to sell products for lower prices, thus increasing demand. Wages could have been fair and the workers retain their dignity. That of course did not happen. Instead of weavers working at home in their village cottages, they were forced to move to crowded industrial cities, pay usurious rents, and work dangerous, humiliating jobs with no labor protections and unthinkably long work days. In the countryside, the enclosure movement in England, justified on grounds of technological efficiency and scientific principles, drove people off their common land and stripped them of their ancient common land rights. Land could have been enclosed in a way that still allowed the previous holders of common land rights to retain the material gain of these lands, but that wasn't done. Instead the land was sold off to the wealthy and mass displacement followed.
Or, in modern times, for all the increased technology we've had over the last 20 years, has quality of life really improved? Has the common man actually seen an increase in quality of life, a lowering of work hours, an increase in dignity, anything? Or have all the benefits of new technology been siphoned upwards, enriching the wealthy at the expense of everyone else? Or look at what now seems the very failed experiment of mass automobile culture. Now our cities are collapsing fiscally because we let them spread out so thin that they're not financially viable anymore; they can't pay for their own infrastructure. If we had used cars largely only outside of cities, and within cities kept things walkable and based on public transit, we would be in a lot better place now. But we went all in, blindly embracing the new technology of the automobile, and look where it brought us.
Now companies are pouring billions into self-driving cars, but no serious governmental action is being taken to address their downsides. They're under-regulated and allowed to self-report shady safety statistics. And even if they do succeed, there is, and likely never will, be any plan for dealing with the millions of workers true driverless cars would displace. We're also not thinking about how driverless cars would further increase urban sprawl, and the types of road uses driverless cars would allow. Automated billboards that wander the streets aimlessly would become much cheaper to operate. Currently cities keep people from living on the public roads through parking requirements. But if my RV can drive itself, maybe it will be possible to skip rent and just live in a mobile apartment that slowly crawls around city streets all night, avoiding ever having to park at all. And there's no policy being considered to address the effects of wealth concentration.
Technology can improve human life, but we have a very, very poor track record of managing these transitions. Often it's precisely techno-optimistic attitudes that prevent us from properly shepherding in new technologies, as it's just assumed that everything will work out in the end. And on a very long term, that is true. Wait long enough and everyone displaced by driverless cars will find other work or simply die in the gutter. Historically, in societies where the wealthy control the political discourse and wealth is highly concentrated, technological improvements tend to lower quality of life for the vast majority of the populace. And our society isn't exactly one with an ethical distribution of wealth and power.
EDIT: typos/grammar
I think you might be too optimistic about how much technological change can be understood in advance and controlled. The psychohistorians from Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series don’t and can’t exist. Life is an uncontrolled experiment. The techno-optimists don’t know the future but neither do we. Predicting the downstream effects of a new technology and whether it will turn out to be net-positive seems about as difficult as predicting the future in general.
Thinking ahead is still a good idea, but it’s going to be tentative thinking about possible scenarios. Much of what we would need to know to regulate technology effectively can only be learned by using it extensively in real-world conditions.
The rollout of self-driving cars is being done much more cautiously than previous transportation technologies because we are a lot more wary than our ancestors were. From a modern perspective, they were extraordinarily reckless when trains and cars and airplanes were invented. Life was cheap back then.
Our high standards about safety are a major reason why companies need to put billions into developing new transportation technologies. These projects are so large that some kind of wealth concentration (public or private) is a prerequisite.
I'd like to offer a counterpoint to the discussion if I may.
Twenty years is indeed an intriguing timeframe. I, too, believe we haven't experienced enough significant innovation in the last 20 years. Many of our basic institutions and ways of life remain largely unchanged, with perhaps the exception of the rise in remote work. Nevertheless, I'd venture to say that the majority of people, if given the choice, wouldn't opt to travel back in time devoid of today's technology. Be it 20 years, 40 years, 80 years, or 160 years ago, I surmise that most individuals would rather experience day-to-day life with current tech than without it in the past.
On another note, is there really anything stopping individuals from living without modern technology? There are indeed individuals who consciously decide to trade their smartphones for flip phones or embrace an off-grid lifestyle. However, I believe the majority refrain from doing so because they value the conveniences of modern communication, medicine, cooking, housing, and entertainment.
Could this issue not be attributed to a city's inability to adapt and efficiently manage its resources? I concur that many US cities struggle with fiscal responsibility—facing extended timelines and costs often ballooning to several times the initial budget. However, if people are driving into a city, they likely don't wish to complete the final leg of their journey on foot or by public transit. Moreover, without a car in the city, venturing beyond public transit limits becomes a challenge, especially when traveling with baggage.
Regarding the distribution of wealth and power, I contend that, due to economic and fiscal policies combined with inflation, our purchasing power feels diminished, especially in sectors like housing, medicine, and education. Yet, doesn't it feel as if our potential to amass wealth and wield power today is greater than during our grandparents' era? This same sentiment might have been true for them as well. Nevertheless, I concur that we all should possess more wealth and power.
To sum up, has technology genuinely not benefited the majority? And for those who've opted out of the technological advancements, wasn't that decision within their agency?
That's a false assumption - if people are mostly driving into a city, then that usually means that the city's road infrastructure is better (e.g. faster) than their public transport. This is despite public transport being fundamentally capable of far more throughput at far lower cost.
Who is "a city", though? Why are the vast majority of cities all coincidentally making the same mistake during the same period? This isn't a problem of incompetence, it's a problem of narrative - a narrative that has been extensively constructed by car companies, all the way back since they invented the term "jaywalking" in their PR campaign to blame parents for their kids being killed by motorists.
I mean, I think both can be true. Having worked in two different cities, for two different companies, the response from employees is the same when their parking is shifted even to just the other side of the building (and worse when it's just across the street ), that is, negative and disgruntled. Add that I'm in an area that gets freezing in the winter, folks don't seem to like having the distance between their warm car and the door to their building increased, they want it decreased. Now, there might be a hybrid approach, as I think a literal tube that picks you up at home and drops you off directly at work would be fantastic as well.
‘Apologies I can’t quote your text to respond due to the (very early build) app that I use to browse tildes, so I’ll try to respond with one paragraph per paragraph in your comment, in order.
I think this graph speaks volumes, though I admit that’s probably because I already agree with the underlying assumption. Perhaps this graph could be considered misleading or dishonest to someone whose worldview is at odds with mine.
I think the question of individuals choosing to opt out of recent technological advances is answered by the same case in the Industrial Revolution: sure, that weaver who spent a lifetime developing their skills can choose to ignore the mechanical loom and keep doing what they’re doing, but there’s no chance they can genuinely keep participating in society when their output from weeks of skilled labour is replaced by a few days of dangerous work from the 16 year old boy working 14 hour shifts. Is that boy’s output paid at a rate that reflects the higher output? Certainly not, that extra value goes to the pockets of the people at the top, and everyone else misses out. Likewise in the modern world, leaps and bounds in digital workspaces have meant that output for any information-based job has skyrocketed but salary hasn’t kept up in a meaningful way.
If city finances were due to mismanagement, I’d expect that only a small number of cities would be under financial hardship and some would be thriving, but instead there’s a nation-wide downturn which doesn’t seem related to local government corruption.
As to wealth distribution compared to our grandparents, I’ve heard that at least in USA, there has been a measurable decline in wealth relative to our parents for the first time in a century, maybe more given the lack of historical records.
I'll play the role of 'someone' here and assert that a major likely factor in the divergence of productivity and earnings in the early 1970s (among many other trends) was the suspension of the Bretton Woods financial exchange system and the resultant conversion of the US dollar to a fiat currency. Frankly, it irks me that so many people overlook as a potential cause for the various failures of the US market economy the notion that the dollar is now basically a meaningless concept.
If the federal reserve can print limitless amounts of money, then money no longer really represents value, and a market economy cannot function effectively under that condition. This isn't to say that the gold standard was perfect - but fiat currency was the absolute worst alternative to it.
The whole topic seems like a massive blind spot in the typical critiques of capitalism or techno-utopianism or whatever. The flaws of fiat currency dovetail nicely with many of capitalism's most egregious acts - bailouts of huge, irresponsible banks, for instance, are accomplished by summoning money out of nowhere and giving it directly to the rich. Similarly, debased currency tends towards inflation, and only those rich enough to afford large amounts of equities or real estate or other inflation-resistant assets can really even hold on to their money. Yet even though these explanations are compelling, most people left of center are hesitant to discuss them because they make corruption and oligopoly seem less an inevitable result of free markets and more the result of the government's economic mismanagement.
I agree with this. I don't think corruption is involved, but I think incentives are not aligned, resources are poorly managed, and bureaucracy eats at spending efficiency. Big cities are spending enormous amounts of time and money on simple things, 20 years just to open a bathroom, and have so much red tape that they ended up with a bus stop shade that didn't work. More examples of things we did fast and now do slow here: https://patrickcollison.com/fast
Depends on the generational timeframe one is looking at, but a lot of parents had decent paying jobs during an era of zero or low Federal interest rates and QE. Parents were religiously putting a small percentage of the paycheck into some index funds, and the Fed was buying up those funds, so parents had wealth! But I would argue that QE, ETFs, index funds etc are in and of themselves financial technologies which the original techno-optimism essay basically praises.
Now, things got a little off the rails. Real disposable income was at historic highs, inflation got too hot, too many people bought houses at historically low interest rates, and national public debt is at all time highs (32 Trillion Dollars) so the Fed is making it expensive for businesses to borrow. The era of free money that our parents had is basically over until something breaks. But still, I'm optimistic that even though the dollar is harder to get now than it was a few years ago, technological leverage will compensate for that (in the meantime, I can communicate with strangers all around the world while ordering whatever I need to my home, playing almost any game or reading almost any book, listening to almost any song, and getting vaccinated for a plethora of diseases.)
Here is a full source of the graph you linked with data up until last year, for reference.
And here and here are sites with charts and information about the generational wealth gap (only up until 2020 and 2021, respectively).
But this is obviously not true, evidenced by the fact that I can buy 12 socks for $18.72.
I think you are broadly correct, but as someone who yearns to live a simple, off-grid, self sufficient life close to nature, it really isn't that simple, at least where I live (southern England). You have to have a certain amount of wealth up-front to achieve this, for example to buy land, and then there are factors such as proximity to family which limit options. It's certainly out of my reach at the moment and I am lucky enough to earn well above average.
Yes! As Cory Doctorow has said: What a technology does is not as important as who it does it for and whom it does it to.
Love that quote. In another comment in this thread, someone mentioned that we can't predict the future and what impacts new techs will have. But it's not that we only fail to plan for the unpredictable impacts of technology. In our current system, we fail to deal with the fully foreseeable and obvious impacts of technology. Once again, driverless cars are a great example. I can't really right now predict quantitatively their mass adoption would have on urban sprawl. The examples I cited would increase urban sprawl, but others might decrease it. If we all shift to automated taxis, then we can scrap most urban parking, store the taxis on exurban parking lots at night, and actually reduce urban sprawl. Some effects are complex and hard to predict, so we can be forgiven for not planning for them.
But in the driverless car example, we're not even planning any system to help those inevitably effected, the drivers themselves. Losing drivers isn't a side effect of the technology; it's the primary purpose. If your "driverless car" still needs a paid driver, there's no point making it driverless. And yet truck driver, taxi driver, etc are some of the largest employment categories in the nation. And they're one of the few ways we still have for people without much formal education to earn a living. A CDL takes some getting, but it's a lot easier than going through an undergrad degree. What's the plan to help these people? There is no state or federal program to help these millions of workers if their entire industry is made obsolete. We're just blindly pushing forward, content to let millions be impoverished while Silicon Valley sucks up more of our economy.
Totally feel this! Here in Metro Manila for example, the govt still prefers to deal with bad traffic by doing road widening projects instead of drastically improving public transport 🤷🏻♀️ And I don't think it's because they "don't know better" or "can't predict the impacts", they're just not motivated to serve the interests of the marginalized (the majority of the population, lower middle class and below).
This specific point sounds kind of cool. Down with renting. Let the self-driving machines give you freedom on the road.
Our cities are already going bankrupt because low-density suburban sprawl doesn't generate enough tax revenue to cover its maintenance costs. Whether you own a home or rent, you still contribute to the local property taxes, directly or indirectly. And again, there's the major problem with traffic. Self-driving cars make a lot more traffic possible, resulting in even more clogged and crumbling roads.
The original manifesto reads like a screed from someone who's never left their ivory tower. There are countless example of technology being utterly horrific for humans, both in the short run and the long run. Most society-level problems are not technical in nature as much as they are political or cultural problems. I guess this is where he'd cut me off and say "technology will fix that!".
Techno-optimism, as laid out by this manifesto, is great if you ignore everything that happens between now and the fantasy hypothesized for the future. Techno-optimism is great if you're wealthy. Techno-optimism is great if you're not a victim of technology (which is such a broad term that it can refer to essentially everything humans have invented from life-saving drugs to nuclear weapons).
Layer in the dog whistles every other paragraph, wild suppositions, statements as fact, and you get a few thousand words that, well, boil down to what is found in the linked redaction.
Maybe it's a stretch, but hearing "technology will fix political or cultural problems!" registers to me as "let's try eugenics again!"
There's a rather appealing takedown essay from Dave Karpf here. It's not a scholarly, heavily cited analysis of the anarchocapitalist assumptions that Andreeson alludes to. But it's a fine historical pastiche of exactly what resulted from more or less giving Andreeson and his ilk what they demanded for the past 30 years.
We can talk about market failures in technologies like vaccines (where there was dire underinvestment for decades because no one could figure out 10x profits), transportation (where there was dire underinvestment because no one could figure out how to make more money except through oligopoly and market consolidation, until Elon Musk leveraged public subsidies)...
The manifesto is a celebration of the special public carveouts received by a tiny, influential crowd that have become the new rentiers, binging on intellectual property and network ownership revenues. Genuine innovation is immaterial or threatening to them unless they're able to profit, and I'd love to see the bunch of them taxed sufficiently to drown their politics in a bathtub.
I'm so tired of technology being used to justify market exploitation. Being used for propaganda. That is no such "techno optimism". The antithesis if anything.
They deliberately substitute "free market" with technology rendering good faith discourse impossible. They win by default in forcing their opponent to debate the merits of technology instead of their unfettered exploits of "free markets". It's technically true that machines do math faster than humans. Such technical truths are not what's up for debate.
I guess it's fitting these guys have built so called digital "town squares" that don't work fuck all. They're overrun with the same kind of bad faith discourse which are the embodiment of themselves. So what chance will they ever make decent platforms. One cannot build and operate something they fundamentally don't believe in. We will continue to see bastardizations of technology until it's free from the grips of people like Andreessen and Horowitz.
Eugh why did they feel the need to write this? Its just an out of touch tech billionaire’s love letter to capitalism and the kind of silicon valley tech bro “progress”.
Seriously:
What a self indulgent clown man the author is.
The more I read the more its clear this is like their babys first political and economic discourse it’s so absolute and lacking nuance that it would be comical if it wasn’t terrifying that many will read this bullshit and agree with some of it.
The screaming irony of this paragraph written by fucking venture capitalists:
Meta: I’m sad this was posted on tildes, we’re all dumber and more bankrupt in every human way, having been subjected to this awful awful ideology.
What’s posted here is a parody/takedown of the original manifesto though?
There is already someone lower in the comments linking to the full version and saying it's "so good" so... suffice it to say I think some people might be missing the parody. Or deliberately dodging it.
That was me, just excited to see discussion happening around this essay which I thought was fantastic. But it was interesting to see that I was in the minority of people who liked the ode to techno-optimism on this website (ironically built with literal technology.) Strangely, my views are unchanged, though. I think life is better because of technological advancements, and at the same time held back because of technological cynicism.
I acknowledge and empathize with the other perspectives, though, because I once held them. In my younger years, I was extremely cynical. I saw the bad more than the good, and when the bad wasn't there, I filled in the blanks. But I've noticed that as my counterparts grew more resentful of technology, I've been growing more optimistic. There's not a single time in the past that I'd rather live in, and I only wish for the future to arrive sooner.
Maybe I am dumber and more bankrupt because of it, even naive or perhaps intellectually compromised, but thats rather unknowable I suppose, subjective at best.
I think life is indeed better because of technological advancement. But that doesn't mean that I support the Manifesto's "remove all regulation and ethics and risk assessment because these hinder progress and capitalism is actually going to incentivize good behavior anyway" perspective. I think we have an absolute boatload of evidence from the not-very-distant past showing that this perspective is deeply flawed, and I don't think it's fair to call the counterpoint of "technological progress can cause problems if we don't do our best to consider how to mitigate risks and ethical issues" too cynical. It's pragmatic, if anything.
Yes, unfortunately he is an influential self indulgent clown man with a lot of money. 🤡🤑😭
Why does this remind me of developers developers developers developers?
I think we need an Andreessen remix. :)
Just read the full version this morning! So good.
Sidenote - just realized the main https://a16z.com homepage is now the essay.
I think this author tag is wrong, you wouldn't normally give the author of blackout poetry as the author/s of the original document