The Cybertruck vs. Socrates
A few days ago in Manhattan I came across a Cybertruck parked in front of a fire hydrant. I took a photo:
Is it possible that the driver was in a rush and just needed to pop into a nearby store for a moment? Maybe. But I checked awhile later and the Cybertruck was still parked there. No one was inside the vehicle.
It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the driver knowingly parked in front of the hydrant, showing a callous disregard for residents of that block. This was just days after two New Yorkers died in a fire because someone’s car was blocking a hydrant.
Our actions reveal who we are. This holds both for individuals and for entire societies. Here we see how a Cybertruck owner might choose to endanger one’s neighbors for a little extra convenience. What’s more depressing is the general conclusion that maybe this is who we are now, at least in part. This ostentatious, lethally designed vehicle threatening the common good is a metaphor for where the country is headed.
America – thanks to our kakistocratic leadership – is daily acting like a doltish playground bully, idiotically strutting around while threatening to fight those who, until a moment ago, were friends. Shutting down vital research, indiscriminately laying off dedicated public servants, hunting down our neighbors with vindictive cruelty. I’m appalled by all of it.
But it’s not just political leaders. Our economic leaders, by which I mean the Big Tech oligarchs, kissed the ring at the inauguration and since then have demonstrated nothing but obedience and compliance with the new administration. (This is as expected, as I discussed on the Jan 27, 2025 Techtonic, “Welcome to the oligarchy.”)
Our economic and political leaders are advancing a certain set of values, the very same that are embodied by the Cybertruck at the hydrant. Self-centeredness, short-sightedness, and – considering the outcomes we will all suffer – sheer, outright stupidity.
Values are supremely important to any society. I recently read all of Plato and this was one of the major themes. Dialogue after dialogue has Socrates challenging people: What are the values we should aspire toward? What values will help us build a healthy society? And what should we do if others subvert or oppose those values?
In The Republic, Plato lists the most important values as wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. In contrast, we can name the principles embodied by Silicon Valley: arrogance, (misplaced) faith in the machine, and above all and driving all, growth at any cost.
A society built on “growth at any cost” is terribly impoverished. UVA professor Mark Edmundson wrote a book a few years ago, Self and Soul, arguing that without ideals, life lacks significant meaning. The book draws on Plato, Aristotle, Homer, and other texts arguing for a life, and a society, based on values.
Our economy allocates its treasure not for the common good but for whatever grows the machine. For example, Facebook/Meta has reportedly spent $100 billion trying to build “the metaverse,” the janky VR platform that shows no sign of becoming popular – ever.
Here’s a screenshot of a promotional video from Meta from 2025, looking more like something from the 1990s:
This is what we get when we allow Mark Zuckerberg to deploy $100 billion as he sees fit. As one Bluesky user put it:
$100 billion is genuinely the kind of money you could “do the impossible” with. Crack nuclear fusion. HIV vaccine. Universal flu vaccine
And they spent it on this
I could say the same for the massive AI buildout going on right now. Google has spent at least $50 billion on its AI initiatives, resulting – so far – in a Gemini chatbot that, according to this Tow Center study, on some tasks is generating an error rate of around 99%.
Some will no doubt respond that this is the free market at work, failed investments will lead to better innovation elsewhere, and so on. I get that, and I’m in favor of technology actually succeeding – just not when it’s built on exploitation of others. Right now what we have is tech that either doesn’t work (like the metaverse) or works mainly to exploit others (like predictive AI, as I wrote about here).
We need a different approach – one built on ethics, ideals, and values rather than cancerous growth. Socrates, in his life and death, showed one excellent way to pursue the better path. And he’s not alone.
Take, for example, the Old Testament prophets, those “voices crying out in the wilderness.” Their message was consistent, and it resonates as clearly today as it did 2,700 years ago: don’t exploit the vulnerable. Back then the people needing protection were “widows and orphans.” Today we have, among others, the “precariat” – the class of people under intrusive Big Tech surveillance at home and at work. These are the very people serving as sources of profit for the world’s most powerful companies, through exploitation.
I started my career as a technologist, believing in the power of digital tools and platforms to make things better (hence the name of my company, Creative Good). But over time my perspective has changed. Yes, tech can be helpful, and it should be helpful, but that’s not what we’ve built so far. We’ve spent hundreds of billions of dollars on tech that exploits vulnerable populations and ecosystems. The only value is “growth at any cost.”
We’re seeing the limits of the technological society. Sure, it can produce a Cybertruck, but if that ends up blocking our access to resources we all need, what good is it?
The work ahead of us is to ask that question, again and again: what good is it? If we can return to values and ideals – like the wisdom of Socrates, like the compassion of the prophets – we’ll finally be ready to envision technology worth building.
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Until next time,
-mark
Mark Hurst, founder, Creative Good
Email: mark@creativegood.com
Podcast/radio show: techtonic.fm
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