>"The best minds in Silicon Valley are preoccupied with a science fiction future they consider it their manifest destiny to build. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are racing each other to Mars. Musk gets most of the press, but Bezos now sells $1B in Amazon stock a year to fund Blue Origin. Investors have put over $8 billion into space companies over the past five years, as part of a push to export our problems here on Earth into the rest of the Solar System.
>As happy as I am to see Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos fired into space, this does not seem to be worth the collapse of representative government."
This is an extraordinarily angry and poorly reasoned piece. How exactly are Musk or Bezos causing the collapse of representative government? This kind of assertion needs to be supported in a robust way rather than tossed in as a barb.
>"Tech culture prefers to solve harder, more abstract problems that haven't been sullied by contact with reality. So they worry about how to give Mars an earth-like climate, rather than how to give Earth an earth-like climate."
Is it really that unlikely that terraforming Mars would lead to advancements than help us better understand and take care of Earth? Of all the people to pin climate change on, why would this guy pick on the founder of Solar City and Tesla? Those two companies have been doing a great deal to shift energy consumption from burning fossil fuels towards using solar power and to replace gas-based cars with efficient electric cars.
How does someone who spends his time selling a bookmarking app and harassing people on twitter feel justified in attacking those actually moving clean tech forward?
>"These big five companies operate on a global scale, and partly because they created the industries they now dominate, they enjoy a very lax regulatory regime. Everywhere outside the United States and EU, they are immune to government oversight, and within the United States the last two administrations have played them with a light touch"
This is also false. Look at the intense scrutiny Apple and its suppliers have faced in China over environmental and labor regulations, for example. In fact, it would be fair to say that the "big five" US tech companies face far more scrutiny in China than either the US or Europe.
I suspect the same is true in Russia, Japan and other regions. Consider that Japanese regulators are currently examining Apple for anti-trust action related to its iOS/iPhone/App Store empire.
well reasoned and well written but I am not sure I agree with the 'intense scrutiny' apple faced. to me it seemed like bad pr that was forgotten within a few months. could you perhaps elaborate on this point?
In 2011, state run media repeatedly criticized Apple in connection with a 42 page report that condemned Apple on a number of fronts. A coalition of 36 environmental groups also rated Apple last of 29 tech companies. In truth, there were serious environmental costs to the actions that Apple (and its suppliers) took in China. On the other hand, local businesses were not scrutinized nearly as closely. It could be argued the difference was due to size, but it would be surprising if protectionism played no role at all.
Since that time, Apple has made tremendous efforts to improve both its labor and environmental efforts, gotten all 14 of its final assembly sites compliant with UL’s Zero Waste to Landfill validation, gotten over 90% of its energy from clean sources and has even gone so far as to make sizable investments in Chinese clean tech companies.
Links related to labor disputes and strikes are harder for me to find due to all the western press on the issue but here are some related to environmental issues:
I see the same problems as the author; but in very different terms. The lack of connection to surroundings -- the lack of meaningful public goods in SF, for example -- contributes to the detachment and other worldly obsessions of tech leaders. Thus the pre-occupation with living forever and colonizing space: the circle of life on earth seems narrow for those who reject its depth.
However, this kind of escapism is not unique to tech in California. California has been a parade of cults, hedonists and lunatics for a hundred and fifty years or more. Tech entrepreneurs are merely lunatics whose pre-occupations were commercializable, legal and transformative for a very large swath of the economy. What is indicted by tech is not engineering or capitalism, but an escapist and visionary way of life.
>The final outcome of that election was:
65.8 million for Clinton
63.0 million for Trump
So, populism (what Trump represents/ed) is bad, but we appeal to populism when quoting the _popular_ vote count. It's an interesting irony.
>In their online life, Europeans have become completely dependent on companies headquartered in the United States.[]...And so Trump is in charge in America, and America has all your data.
So those data centers in Ireland and the Netherlands, etc. are kind of fictional...
>As happy as I am to see Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos fired into space, this does not seem to be worth the collapse of representative government."
This is an extraordinarily angry and poorly reasoned piece. How exactly are Musk or Bezos causing the collapse of representative government? This kind of assertion needs to be supported in a robust way rather than tossed in as a barb.
>"Tech culture prefers to solve harder, more abstract problems that haven't been sullied by contact with reality. So they worry about how to give Mars an earth-like climate, rather than how to give Earth an earth-like climate."
Is it really that unlikely that terraforming Mars would lead to advancements than help us better understand and take care of Earth? Of all the people to pin climate change on, why would this guy pick on the founder of Solar City and Tesla? Those two companies have been doing a great deal to shift energy consumption from burning fossil fuels towards using solar power and to replace gas-based cars with efficient electric cars.
How does someone who spends his time selling a bookmarking app and harassing people on twitter feel justified in attacking those actually moving clean tech forward?
>"These big five companies operate on a global scale, and partly because they created the industries they now dominate, they enjoy a very lax regulatory regime. Everywhere outside the United States and EU, they are immune to government oversight, and within the United States the last two administrations have played them with a light touch"
This is also false. Look at the intense scrutiny Apple and its suppliers have faced in China over environmental and labor regulations, for example. In fact, it would be fair to say that the "big five" US tech companies face far more scrutiny in China than either the US or Europe.
I suspect the same is true in Russia, Japan and other regions. Consider that Japanese regulators are currently examining Apple for anti-trust action related to its iOS/iPhone/App Store empire.