DrBanneker
Space is the Place
To be clear, I am not naive about Silicon Valley and there has always been racism and sexism there that served as a barrier. Also, it's origins were not so idealistic and was basically Cold War defense contracting and Fairchild Semiconductor which was lead by the arch race-realist William Shockley. If you are interested, watch this video:
But honestly, for a time in the 80s and 90s, Silicon Valley put off an air like capitalism with the California liberal/hippie flair could be a business model that wouldn't be ultimately problematic. Back then the industrial villains were the banks, energy and chemical companies or defense contractors. Apart from operating systems, dominated by Microsoft, and CPUs, dominated by Intel, most Silicon Valley industries were very fragmented with many competitors. Even the PC market had a gazillion companies: who remembers Gateway, Austin, and Compaq (now HP)?
Most SV rich people were somewhat weird but not in a malevolent way nor power hungry. Bill Gates, despite being the richest man in the world, had not yet gotten into weird shyt and Andrew Grove who ran Intel had relatives who were tortured and killed in the Holocaust so he wasn't on some tech fascist shyt. Even the conservative people like Larry Ellison at Oracle just stayed out of politics and gave Cali politicians the middle finger and was obsessed with boat racing.
Everyone with a tech background wanted to go to SV not just to get rich but do cool shyt. It was harder to get wealthy up until the mid 90s and venture capitalists weren't as tolerant of vapor bullshyt and conmen. Most people had some legit tech knowledge except Jobs who partnered with Steve Wozniak to get the tech at Apple started.
This began to change with the dotcom craze and all the money rolling in. Any dumbass with a smart con could get rich and they still had the biggest egos as if they were God's gift to humanity. Note this is when Musk, Thiel, Sacks, stepped in and the crazy VCs like Andreesen & Horowitz got traction. Granted Andreesen was a genuine tech head creating the Mosaic and Netscape browsers (the big browsers before Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Firefox). Same with Napster co-creator Sean Parker who helped launch Facebook.
It started all good. We had half a dozen search engines (Altavista, AskJeeves, Lycos, etc.) and even when Google showed up their first motto was "don't be evil." They later dropped that. The founders that survived the crash and shakeout though were different...kind of like how the first seasons of American Idol had authentic, just want to be discovered people and the later seasons had prima donas and ego maniacs. Their ruthless business moves and weirdo ideologies and hunger for power were kinda obvious back then. Especially with Thiel and Zuckerberg but even Musk had a glow around him for the people who didn't look under the hood.
That shyt is all gone now. They are literally the new Lex Luthor style villains. The smart people read William Gibson's books 40 years ago (Neuromancer, the Sprawl Series). He saw how this would turn out and that the super rich were just trying to lord over us like Medieval barons.
I am a small business owner, so obviously a capitalist of sorts, however I think this turn is going to dead the idea for another generation or two that capitalism's invisible hand inevitably leads towards good that all these free market type Ayn Rand fanboys have been believing and hyping since the 80s. The 2008 crash made everyone hate Finance so Tech was the last good place left. Between the vicious layoffs and the political takeover they just burned their image. We are again seeing why FDR kicked their asses back in the 30s and Teddy did so even earlier. I don't want to hear anymore 'self-regulating' claims.
The problem is, there are no big anti-fascist countries left to fight any fascists now the US and slowly Europe are falling down. Guess we gotta buckle up hard. This is going to hurt
But honestly, for a time in the 80s and 90s, Silicon Valley put off an air like capitalism with the California liberal/hippie flair could be a business model that wouldn't be ultimately problematic. Back then the industrial villains were the banks, energy and chemical companies or defense contractors. Apart from operating systems, dominated by Microsoft, and CPUs, dominated by Intel, most Silicon Valley industries were very fragmented with many competitors. Even the PC market had a gazillion companies: who remembers Gateway, Austin, and Compaq (now HP)?
Most SV rich people were somewhat weird but not in a malevolent way nor power hungry. Bill Gates, despite being the richest man in the world, had not yet gotten into weird shyt and Andrew Grove who ran Intel had relatives who were tortured and killed in the Holocaust so he wasn't on some tech fascist shyt. Even the conservative people like Larry Ellison at Oracle just stayed out of politics and gave Cali politicians the middle finger and was obsessed with boat racing.
Everyone with a tech background wanted to go to SV not just to get rich but do cool shyt. It was harder to get wealthy up until the mid 90s and venture capitalists weren't as tolerant of vapor bullshyt and conmen. Most people had some legit tech knowledge except Jobs who partnered with Steve Wozniak to get the tech at Apple started.
This began to change with the dotcom craze and all the money rolling in. Any dumbass with a smart con could get rich and they still had the biggest egos as if they were God's gift to humanity. Note this is when Musk, Thiel, Sacks, stepped in and the crazy VCs like Andreesen & Horowitz got traction. Granted Andreesen was a genuine tech head creating the Mosaic and Netscape browsers (the big browsers before Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Firefox). Same with Napster co-creator Sean Parker who helped launch Facebook.
It started all good. We had half a dozen search engines (Altavista, AskJeeves, Lycos, etc.) and even when Google showed up their first motto was "don't be evil." They later dropped that. The founders that survived the crash and shakeout though were different...kind of like how the first seasons of American Idol had authentic, just want to be discovered people and the later seasons had prima donas and ego maniacs. Their ruthless business moves and weirdo ideologies and hunger for power were kinda obvious back then. Especially with Thiel and Zuckerberg but even Musk had a glow around him for the people who didn't look under the hood.
That shyt is all gone now. They are literally the new Lex Luthor style villains. The smart people read William Gibson's books 40 years ago (Neuromancer, the Sprawl Series). He saw how this would turn out and that the super rich were just trying to lord over us like Medieval barons.
I am a small business owner, so obviously a capitalist of sorts, however I think this turn is going to dead the idea for another generation or two that capitalism's invisible hand inevitably leads towards good that all these free market type Ayn Rand fanboys have been believing and hyping since the 80s. The 2008 crash made everyone hate Finance so Tech was the last good place left. Between the vicious layoffs and the political takeover they just burned their image. We are again seeing why FDR kicked their asses back in the 30s and Teddy did so even earlier. I don't want to hear anymore 'self-regulating' claims.
The problem is, there are no big anti-fascist countries left to fight any fascists now the US and slowly Europe are falling down. Guess we gotta buckle up hard. This is going to hurt
