Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

they're easy to spot and avoid tho

caek, what is that from

sorry https://trackchanges.postlight.com/podcast-20-rex-sorgatz-the-other-side-of-fate-2151da51f998#.ivs4e4udy

hey I know that Paul Ford guy, was at his wedding and everything

what?!

I'm surprised at the connection, but mostly surprised you aren't commenting on a thread about his wedding saying that you didn't go but heard it was a bad ceremony

he married the woman who officiated my own wedding. we aren't best buds or anything, but his wife is an old college friend of mine

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CnCBn18VMAAfqhw.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/ZeqyR0o.jpg

Benioff is one of the least terrible though

Like, he actually uses some of his money & influence on actual progressive political causes in the real world, he's not trying to invent Utopia in a west coast bunker and export it to the rest of us dummies

Yeah he's ok w me

Tweet was inappropriate but its undeniable social media has been crucial un bringing this issue wide attention

he is sorry

Source?

Sorry. Im sorry. Im trying to remove it

yeah idk look at LBI's image

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CnXjMNOUsAAztY1.jpg:small

idk what 'expensify' is but they do realize the Lord of the Flies was a rotting pig's head on a stick, right?

oddly enough, so is the ceo of expensify

should we have a thread for Sourpuss Valley techno-dystopianism?

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/07/pokemon-go-invasion-oliver-stone-snowden-surveillance/

It manipulates your behaviour. It has happened already quite a bit on the Internet, but you’ll see it everywhere—you'll see a new form of, frankly, a robot society, where they will know how you want to behave and they will make the mockup that matches how you behave and feed you. It’s what they call totalitarianism.

lol the promos for that oliver stone snowden film look horrible

I enjoy the work of Joseph Gordon-Levitt but hearing him do that monotone "I do very important work" voice made me shake my head

Seems relevant, in terms of mocking SV shit:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/07/31/magazine/the-oppressive-gospel-of-minimalism.html

the author retweeted this which is definitely an early stage homeware startup look right now

https://twitter.com/333333333433333/status/759038739951788032

I think that's the shade of pink that BUTT uses

He now carries nothing but a bag of clothes and a backpack containing a computer, an iPad and a smartphone. “I have zero other possessions,” he writes

Other than clothing and all of the world's knowledge, information, communications channels and entertainment at my fingertips, I have no possessions.

that's all I took on vacation and while I was surviving, I really missed my shit

scratch that, I just had the iPad and phone in one bag and clothes in another. even then, I kept accumulating magazines and books and more shit. I am an expert shit-acquirer

all of the world's knowledge, information, communications channels and entertainment

vast amounts of this are not on the internet but sure

no, it's all there. you just haven't found it yet.

so how about that Peter Thiel, living off the blood of youth? what a guy

“I don’t hold onto all the things society tells me to hold onto.”

deal_with_it.gif

"i want to live on a barge in the ocean, with other libertarians."
"huh ok."
"forever. i need blood."

wait was is this blood thing about

Google it.

surprised the Soylent guy's escapades in "experimental housing" didn't make it to this thread yet

Peter Thiel is Dracula

vast amounts of this are not on the internet but sure

― Οὖτις, Monday, August 1, 2016 3:59 PM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Obv did not mean that literally, just kind of lol @ people who are like "I only travel with clothing and an iphone and ipad" when that's the equivalent of traveling with many libraries' worth of books and periodicals, maps, directories, music and movies, etc.

yeah if you can get any fuckin' wifi that doesn't suck

I only travel with a sock to hide my genitals and a CB radio

and a bigass antenna for the CB

I guess you could put that in the sock, too

idk if this is the right thread but the combination of start-up / new tech and complete gullibility around Theranos is fascinating and points to a wider issue around disruptive technology that sounds amazing but doesn't actually work.

Elizabeth Holmes' chutzpah is remarkable:

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/08/elizabeth-holmes-presentation-theranos-data

From a paywalled FT article:

“It is a bait and switch,” said Dr Geoffrey Baird, an associate professor of laboratory medicine at the University of Washington. “We were told we were going to hear about the science of Theranos, but this is a new speculative prototype idea.”

“What we just saw was BS,” he added. “It is not the device they used clinically, and we saw nothing that tells us that these assays are valid or even safe for patients.”

John Ioannidis, a professor at Stanford University Medical School, Ms Holmes’ alma mater, said the presentation was “better than nothing” but bemoaned the fact that the company still had not produced any peer-reviewed research.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/15/blood-simpler?currentPage=all

What exactly happens in the machines is treated as a state secret, and Holmes’s description of the process was comically vague: “A chemistry is performed so that a chemical reaction occurs and generates a signal from the chemical interaction with the sample, which is translated into a result, which is then reviewed by certified laboratory personnel.” She added that, thanks to “miniaturization and automation, we are able to handle these tiny samples.”

Board members are clearly charmed by Holmes. She is a careful listener, and she is unnervingly serene; employees say that they can’t remember an instance when she raised her voice. “She has sometimes been called another Steve Jobs, but I think that’s an inadequate comparison,” Perry, who knew Jobs, said. “She has a social consciousness that Steve never had. He was a genius; she’s one with a big heart.”

Kissinger advised Holmes to concentrate on building up Theranos in the U.S. before launching it in developing nations, he said, so that “it would not look like we were experimenting on them.”

Theranos has been a busted flush for a while - there's a great article from Vanity Fair from May (and one from Wired from last year) excoriating the expansion of silicon valley tech press breathlessness to medical matters (I thought I read about it on here, but I guess not?)

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/05/theranos-silicon-valley-media

http://www.wired.com/2015/10/theranos-scandal-exposes-the-problem-with-techs-hype-cycle/

iirc theranos had some licensing revoked and it's valued lower than their outstanding debts

Yep, went from being valued at $9bn to practically zero within a few weeks and Holmes has a two year ban on operating a lab pending.

http://blog.traintracks.io/a-swede-returns-to-silicon-valley-from-china-2/

My first experience of the States and of Silicon Valley was absolutely soul-crushingly disappointing. I landed in San Francisco and felt like I had traveled back in time. Far from the expected glass towers of a technological utopia, what I found was a surprisingly run down city that reminded me of traveling in Eastern Europe. It seemed to be all pot and potholes, and the culture was difficult to navigate. I was told not to discuss religion and politics, which is really all we talk about in Sweden, and I was confused by the sheer amount of narcissistic Ayn Rand followers.

What's the point of innovation if you're not building a better society?

I encountered levels of homelessness and mental illness that I was entirely unprepared for, but was repeatedly discouraged from donating any spare change by my new American community. It's not your problem, that was the mantra that un-ironically flowed from the lips of entrepreneurs that otherwise convinced themselves that they were making the world a better place, presumably for themselves and the people who were their problem. There was something absurd and almost obscene about watching the technocrats step over and around the homeless to get to jobs where they're given free food and drink.

As a Swede coming to the States, I was disillusioned. I had, as I think many young entrepreneurs have, idolized Silicon Valley as a utopian vision of an idealistic but well-meaning band of technocrats building the foundations for a just and democratic society, but in its place I found vanity, pettiness and greed. Not only did the emperor have no clothes, but the naked corpus revealed was unappetizing to my Swedish quasi-socialist ideals. Ultimately, I felt alone in Silicon Valley... I left.

Well, yeah.

yeah, San Francisco, what shithole, not enough glass towers.