Techno-Optimism: From Billionaires to Tent Cities in One Silicon Bubble

We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off. –?Palahniuk

Telling people to be optimistic about technology is like telling beavers to be optimistic about dams.?It makes no sense, and it reflects a fundamental misunderstanding about what technology is.?

Without the dam, there is no beaver. Without technology, there are no humans. We are inextricably linked to our technology.?

This is precisely why we should not be optimistic but rather skeptical of new technology.?

Technology is not a benign force because it transforms the human experience. We do not merely use tools; we integrate with technology completely.?

We do not merely wield a hammer; it becomes an extension of the arm.?We do not look at a telescope or a smartphone; we look through them to see into otherwise inaccessible worlds.?

There is nothing inherently good about technology unless it improves our experience as human beings.?

We can never be too optimistic about how technology will impact society because of unintended consequences.?

Technology imposes its own rules on society. Once these rules are in place, they become difficult or impossible for us to escape individually.

Look no further than the automobile or the Internet to recognize that technology has utterly transformed culture, entertainment, laws, and the economy.??

The world is a complex place where there are no easy answers.?

We should be careful of ideologies that try to make the world seem simple, like capitalism, communism, and religion.

We should all be cautious when facing the unbridled optimism of a billionaire who has, to my knowledge, never lost anything.?

If you want to see the real future envisioned by Andreessen, look no further than his firm's track record of recent IPOs.

It is a future where Marc gets infinitely more prosperous, and the rest of us are left holding the bag:

Living Inside the Reality Distortion Field

I spent my life building new technology in Andreessen's Silicon Valley.?Not writing the checks, mind you, but doing the actual work.

I even worked for Marc at one point at Ning, his other social media company you've never heard of.?

You know, the one that did not create generational wealth and turn every employee into a multi-millionaire.?

In that one, Marc still managed to break even, somehow.?The Midas touch strikes again.

On the other hand, the employees who toiled for years received, if I recall correctly, and I could be wrong about this, a fistful of peanuts and an appreciative smack on the a**.?

Or, it was a subscription to the Jelly of the Month club? I digress.??

Has the world improved for all the technology I helped to create??

If we measure our success only in terms of productivity and efficiency, as Andreessen does, clearly it has.?

But if the world is so much better than it used to be, why are 24% of all Americans now taking psychotropic medications?

If we have built a utopia, why is it a world where so many need to be numb?

Marc tells you to ignore what you see with your own lying eyes.

He is the used car salesman telling you she's a classic ride - right before he hands you to the finance guy to sell you an extended warranty.?

The incredible tone-deafness of telling everyone to be optimistic during the, I don't know, third once-in-a-hundred-years economic meltdown in the last 20 years that is wiping out the middle class, again, is almost magnificent in its insensitivity.?

Marc, if you are reading this, and I hope you are, just take a look around you, a-hole.?

Look at the tent cities in Palo Alto, the people living in RVs on El Camino, the dystopian hellscape.?We are already living in your techno-optimist future.?

And we're very,?very?pissed off about it.?

Moving Beyond Ideological Fantasy

We don't need more optimism, we need more realism.

Technology is only as good as those who create it. Neither the motives of profit-driven companies, nor the policies of government can control technology's impacts.

What we need is a groundswell among technologists to develop innovations conscientiously.

Engineers and programmers must be educated in ethics and trained to consider the societal impacts of their work. We must foster critical thought so they can make morally informed choices, even under tremendous pressure.

Technologists have a duty to whistleblow unethical practices and wield their expertise responsibly. We must empower them to stand up to corporate self-interest and government overreach.

Grassroots professional organizations can catalyze this movement, connecting conscientious developers to advocate together. We need networks that support technologists acting with integrity.

We shape technology and thereafter it shapes us. But at every step, we have agency through the choices we make.

The future will be determined by the moral courage of countless individuals.

Together, we must author a humanistic path forward.