Re: <nettime> Against techno-optimism

[Carl Guderian via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Hoi Patrice!

It’s a quick if painful read. The richest men on the planet and they’re too cheap to hire an editor. There are plenty of mercenary and/or gullible biographers who could pretty up the screed for general consumption—buff out the bad grammar, putty over the cracks in their reasoning, such as the excluded middle between central planning and the free market's “self-discipline”. 

Even one of the opening statements is manifestly false: love does scale—at least in the most recent crisis. In the pandemic, the vast majority complied with mask recommendations—later mandates—and lockdowns, and lined up for vaccinations when they became available, to protect themselves and others from Covid. They didn’t reach for guns but knitting needles and yeast packets (for bread). Force was pointless, because you can’t shoot a virus with an AR-15, and global markets were saved only by government intervention (yet again), not by “market self-discipline”. Speaking of which, Andriessen and his friends weren’t anywhere to be found then, except at the federal trough.

One of their techno-optimist “saints”, John Galt, aside from being fictional and a rapist, invents an actual perpetual-motion engine then destroys it in a fit of pique, and then goes on to organise a national collapse that would surely lead to millions of deaths (including his child by Dagny Taggart, when the hospitals shut down). He’s not a very good advertisement for the ethos.

The manifesto is the philosophical equivalent of an email from a Nigerian warlords’ widow—if you don’t notice its sloppiness you’re a likely sucker..

Carl

> On 18 Oct 2023, at 14:57, Patrice Riemens via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org> wrote:
> 
> Ah yeah, I am going to read it, always curious about the next nonsense produced by libertarian dickheads.
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Vesna Manojlovic via nettime-l" <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>
> To: "collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets" <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>
> Cc: "Vesna Manojlovic" <becha@xs4all.nl>
> Sent: Wednesday, 18 October, 2023 12:34:02
> Subject: <nettime> Against techno-optimism
> 
> Recently published "Techno-Optimist Manifesto" by Marc Andreessen is,
> IMHO, the most vile & horrible neo-liberal nonsense,
> and I am afraid it will speak to many aspiring technocrats :(
> 
> I am proud to be into the multiple "enemy categories" of this guy:
> degrowth, sustainability, “trust and safety”, “tech ethics”, diversity..
> 
> I encourage you to be AGAINST techno-optimism, against Leviathan...
> https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/fredy-perlman-against-his-story-against-leviathan
> 
> The antidotes?
> 
> Care, solidarity, ecofemnism, empathy, XR, intersectional 
> environmentalism...
> https://labs.ripe.net/author/becha/ripe-community-resilience-economy-of-care/
> &
> https://labs.ripe.net/author/becha/environmental-impact-of-internet-urgency-de-growth-rebellion/
> 
> Vesna
> 
> More Links:
> 
> The content of the "manifesto" has been continuously disputed on UnCiv 
> list since 2013, https://lists.puscii.nl/wws/info/uncivilization ,
> and in 2009 by the original "uncivilisation" manifesto: 
> https://dark-mountain.net/about/manifesto/ ,
> by climate scientists : 
> https://bonpote.com/en/12-climate-delay-discourses-and-how-to-debunk-them/ 
> & 
> https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/7B11B722E3E3454BB6212378E32985A7/S2059479820000137a.pdf/discourses_of_climate_delay.pdf 
> 
> and recently by the authors of the TESCREAL acronym ... 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TESCREAL
> 
> 
> Jason Lefkowitz: https:// octodon . social/@jalefkowit/111246809951833086
> 
>             ^^^^^^ (URL modified because of the spam filtering rules by 
> my ISP!)
> 
> "a bruised ego.
> 
> Andreessen doesn't like the way people look at his investments 
> critically these days. He doesn't like the questions he gets today about 
> environmental impact, labor mistreatment, racial and sexual 
> discrimination, and so forth at his portfolio companies. He bristles at 
> assuming the responsibilities required of any grown-up business person.
> 
> What he wants instead is to go back to the oughts, when the entire 
> global media edifice was credulously repeating the line that his 
> investments weren't just making him and his rich friends richer, but 
> were improving the world to boot. He liked that treatment quite well. He 
> would very much like the rest of us to go back to giving it to him.
> 
> But he can't just, you know, SAY that. He'd be laughed out of the room 
> if he did. So he has to dress it all up as a philosophical argument, as 
> A Movement, even if by doing so he makes it clear just how tenuous his 
> grasp is of the works he's quoting, and just how much of his worldview 
> came from reading “thinkers” whose personal mission was to comfort the 
> comfortable.
> 
> Which makes it tempting to dunk on, I know. But don't bother, because 
> the philosophy is beside the point. It's all just window dressing placed 
> to obscure the fundamental point: the world used to tell this guy his 
> farts smelled like flowers; at some point, it stopped; and he'd really 
> like it to start back up again."
> 
> 
> https://fortune.com/2023/10/16/marc-andreessen-techno-optimist-manifesto-ai-50-billion-people-billionaire-vc/
> 
> https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/17/when-was-the-last-time-marc-andreessen-talked-to-a-poor-person/?guccounter=1
> 
> https://www.axios.com/2023/10/17/marc-andreessens-ai-manifesto-hurts-his-own-cause
> 
> Images:
> 
> https://www.leolinne.com/?portfolio=discourses-of-climate-delay
> 
> https://wiki.techinc.nl/File:IMG_7881.PNG
> 
> https://labs.ripe.net/images/t1xLN7do8IYUtV0OXgl12IazUIs=/8059/width-1536/IMG_9077.jpg
> 
> 
> -- 
> https://becha.unciv.nl
> https://social.v.st/web/@becha/
> 
> 
> -- 
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