We fell for it.

When I say “we” I’m specifically thinking of Millennials, being that I am one myself, but plenty of older folks during the 1990s–2010s were leading the charge on this stuff. Whether in each case they were doing that cynically, or were true believers in the Computer Age, you be the judge.

(Boiled down, it’s the Bill Gates vs. Steve Jobs dichotomy. Jobs was a true believer, no doubt about it. When he talked about Apple innovating at the intersection of Technology and the Liberal Arts, he meant it. Gates? I’m not sure we’ll ever know what his true values are. He was a pretty cynical operator from the jump.)

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Back to techno-utopianism.

We were literally told that as result of the Computer/Internet revolution, the entire nature of business was changing…politics too! Nothing would ever be the same again. This was a revolution…only much less bloody than past revolutions because this time, the people and the financiers were in alignment.

Hallelujah! Nerdy programmer with a VC check, lead me to the Promised Land. 🙌

Yeah, we fell for it.

Companies would operate more like collectives. Employees would have immense power to set their own goals and be radically UX-focused. Profits would be widely distributed. The old corporate structures & crony capitalism would largely be done away with.

In a certain sense, becoming a software engineer was to be birthing a new form of leftism. After all, when you inspect the original goals of the Free Software Foundation, it sounds a whole lot like code-centric Communism. And sure, Microsoft railed against it for a while, but libre software got corporatized as open source software and was rolled out as the foundational layer of modern computing.

Peace in our time.

We fell for it.

All of those lofty visions of computer technology making the world a radically better place largely turned out to be complete and utter hogwash. The very instant capitalists realized they had extracted enough out of that myth to gain ultimate power and reassert dominance, they pounced.

2020-2026 has been a boiling-frogs-in-pots shift from collectivism to an extreme sort of New Oligarchy. Software engineers weren't making the world a more fair, creative, and democratic place. LOL! The exact opposite, in fact, has occurred.

There have been some essays floating around that long-time software engineers are “grieving.” Apparently, we mourn for the loss of our handcrafting coding skills now that computing has arrived at this glorious new Age of AI.

Yes, of course we're grieving!

But using agents to generate "code" isn't the issue. That's merely a symptom, one among many. The root cause? Societal systems based on pure greed, theft of labor, and bigoted supremacy which were NEVER properly dismantled. The new “leftism” of tech? Nothing but a mirage.

Millennials got played.

And wow did we fall for it.

Here’s the wacky bit: at a time when it has become crystal-clear that techno-utopianism is a dead-end project, a failed philosophy, snake oil, smoke and mirrors…everything we’re being told regarding where the AI push is taking us by the Silicon Valley elites is exactly that!

A mere smattering of quotes:

We are past the event horizon; the takeoff has started. Humanity is close to building digital superintelligence. AI will contribute to the world in many ways, but the gains to quality of life from AI driving faster scientific progress and increased productivity will be enormous; the future can be vastly better than the present.

The rate of new wonders being achieved will be immense. It’s hard to even imagine today what we will have discovered by 2035…
–Sam Altman

Technology is the glory of human ambition and achievement, the spearhead of progress, and the realization of our potential.

We can advance to a far superior way of living, and of being.

We have the tools, the systems, the ideas.

We have the will.

It is time, once again, to raise the technology flag.

It is time to be Techno-Optimists.
–Marc Andreessen

I’ve tried to lay out a vision of a world that is both plausible if everything goes right with AI, and much better than the world today. Everyone (including AI companies!) will need to do their part both to prevent risks and to fully realize the benefits.

But it is a world worth fighting for. If all of this really does happen over 5 to 10 years—the defeat of most diseases, the growth in biological and cognitive freedom, the lifting of billions of people out of poverty to share in the new technologies, a renaissance of liberal democracy and human rights—I suspect everyone watching it will be surprised by the effect it has on them. I think many will be literally moved to tears by it.
–Dario Amodei

🙋🏻‍♂️ Sorry, I just have to ask:

WHO ACTUALLY BELIEVES THIS HORSESHIT?!?!

Thankfully, people are increasingly not buying any of this dreck—especially young people. Millennials en masse are finally waking up and souring on the whole techno-utopian project, and while Gen Z does use many of the chatbots and genAI services out there on the regular, they’ve also been at the forefront of loudly and proudly proclaiming that they’re being lied to and manipulated against their will by Big Tech.

(Heh, you’ve got cojones of steel if you’re a commencement speaker and you dare even utter the word “AI” in your speech. 🤣)

I’ve written before on how Millenials and Gen Z teaming up will be the greatest force for political change in history.

Our best hope? It is to listen to the young people. Partner with them, help them channel their rage into action, and focus non-stop on wresting back control from the tech moguls and oligarchs.

I have zero tolerance for anyone who makes fun of young people. They will succeed where many of us who have entered middle-age have clearly failed, and our job now is to cheer them on at every opportunity.

• Cheer them on as they boo rich assholes.

• Cheer them on as they launch neo-Luddite movements (and spokespuppets).

• Cheer them on as they buy vinyl and revive analog cameras.

• Cheer them on as they join multigenerational and bipartisan efforts to curb Big Tech power and stop data center buildouts.

I want to do everything I can to spread the word that nothing is inevitable. We, the people, still hold tremendous power. The Elon Musks and Mark Zuckerbergs of the world may think that with their billions and trillions of dollars, they are untouchable.

They are wrong.

It may appear as, for a time, they are winning. But such success is fleeting, and the sentiment of the masses can change on a dime. Today’s techno-utopian hero is tomorrow’s arch-villain. Our job is every day, every hour, every minute, be relentless.

• Call the Big Tech moguls out.

• Refuse to play their cynical media games.

• Talk to your friends and neighbors about what they’re really doing.

• Build a permission structure to migrate away from Big Tech offerings and find saner alternatives.

Look, I’m as tired as y’all that at every social event I seem to go to, we somehow all end up talking about AI or social media. Is that fun? No, of course not.

But we can’t back down from the struggle. Lord knows Marc Andreessen or Jensen Huang aren’t about to. The sun never goes down on Empire.

We can weep and wail and wring our hands that they’re putting us through hell.

We can walk away and hide and pretend it’ll all go away.

Or we can stand fast as the Resistance. We can fight! ✊

Are you with me?

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Jared ✌️

🤔🌩️ Things that make you think:

As Europe bakes in the throes of a deadly heatwave, residents living near the continent’s largest data center in Slough, a town just west of central London, UK, are enduring extreme temperatures.

As The Guardian reports, the enormous facility ten miles from London Heathrow is making the sweltering heat even more unbearable, with local residents likening the experience to something “pinching your body and burning your skin.” Weather station data revealed that temperatures near the facility have been several degrees higher this week — approaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit — compared to the surrounding area.

–Massive Data Center Cooks Nearby Residents Alive Amidst Deadly Heatwave