> Inevitably, Elon Musk, techno-capitalism’s own Zelig, also has strong opinions on the subject: in destroy-infrastructure-first wars of the future, he opined in a recent Westpoint appearance, “any ground based communications like fiber optic cables and cell phone towers will be destroyed.” If only someone ran an internet satellite company to save us!
I get the impression this is supposed to be dripping sarcasm, but in a fairly literal sense it is describing the expected and productive dynamic. Musk has identified a problem and is proposing a solution. To hurry matters along he is implementing the solution whether everyone agrees there is a problem or not.
How else is it supposed to work? This dynamic turned up a few times and I don't expect the author to have a productive theory for how we're supposed to organise people to effect change - I expect it will involve waiting for Democrats and Republicans to agree on something first (which, traditionally, not a process that leads to the highest of speedy successes). If we're waiting for people with no financial stake or know-how to build and promote satellite networks it could take a while.
As a veteran of arguing with people on the internet I speak with some experience on the topic of whinging about problems; that strategy is never going to get good results and is only worth following if you find entertainment from arguing with people. To get results in the real world the process needs to be the person who identifies problem sells the problem and the solution at the same time.
Through an ethics committee gated, peer-reviewed, consensus driven academic technocracy.
They are criticizing one extreme while being oblivious that they represent the other.
He went through a phase of introducing his books by claiming he's a misunderstood sociologist that is doing what he's doing (on the markets) to prove his various theories, which he developed at the LSE under Popper. This particularly applies to the concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflexivity_(social_theory) .
Essentially, the things Soros actually did that people hate him for (such as in the UK the episode with the pound) he claims he did to demonstrate that individuals shouldn't be allowed to do them and that especially markets cannot be trusted to be resistant to problematic individuals. Instead some overarching control mechanism must be inserted of the nature I described.
Places in seasonably inhospitable water end up stranded from the internet when this happens (e.g. Nome, Alaska).
My guess is, their vision of a better world is just psychological self defense and way too many people buy into that delusion.
Learning actual history can be enlightening.
The FTX horror show was nothing like as anomalous as the PR of other places would have you believe, which is one reason VCs felt so OK flinging money at them.
No, I've seen individual firms in the various (social and otherwise) online media subindustries, like firms in every earlier media subindustry, each declaring themselves the one arbiter of what will be treated as true and/or worth transmitting on the platforms they operate, but... that's a very different thing than your claim.
> Seems difficult to not noticed with how loudly that role was cheered on by those who thought it would entrench their political ideology into society forever.
Some people may have cheered on individual moderation decisions (but typically the people invested enough to do so had an even longer list they objected too), but no significant group cheered on the fantasy you describe, nor did any significant group embrance the even more fantastic belief you describe as characteristic of the people cheering on that fantasy.
Some of the ideas mentioned in the article such as subscription policing and seasteading have been around for decades.
The arrogance of the wealthy goes back to the 80s, and reflects the moral change of "greed is good" replacing "money is the root of all evil" (which started long before, of course).
Maybe what's changed is that SV wasn't running the country 10-20 years ago?
Thankfully not all tech workers suffer from this disease.
It might even be that the highly regarded and remunerated job of coding is what gives the people the mindset that they can afford dissent. Those people may thing not only that they're more entitled to have a dissenting opinion but more importantly feel safer expressing it.
Tech leaders and businesses leaders are publicly speaking to promote their interests and their views. They always have done it.
Going from this to a conspiracy theory where tech and capital are comploting together to subdue the world, shape it to their liking, while using a soviet style apparatus is laughable.
Also, pretending that people on the right are just recycling leftist theories (of Adorno, Rene Girard, Gramsci) is pretty funny.
It sounds like he did what he could with the technology that was available at the time.
This isn't a case of big tech flipping from Democrats to Republicans (or libertarians). It's that they never were on anyone's side but their own. For a decade they were enabled and allowed to grow their power unchecked. Now they don't need to obey anymore. They haven't flipped to the Republicans. They've flipped to themselves.
I wouldn’t say libertarian, more oligarchical.
"Adjusting picture frames while the house collapses into a sinkhole" sums up much of the opposition in the US ATM
However, it's not clear to me how "concentrated power" has lead to "the decline of critical, open debate" ?
And people like Musk are increasingly making use of this misconception to justify their opinions with fake authority, as someone who understands tech rather than someone who owns companies that employs people who understand tech.
It's becoming more and more important to remind people that no, these people aren't in any way different from the rest of the wealthy owning class; they aren't smarter, they didn't pull themselves up by the bootstraps, they simply pay qualified people to make them money, and their only value to society is the capital they own.
