Marc Andreessen, the world's most famous venture capitalist, published an article called The Techno Optimist Manifesto a few months ago. He discusses how we are being lied to about technology: we think that it is "on the verge of ruining everything" when in reality technology has pulled a billion people out of poverty. He argues that the pressing forward with technology to create infinite energy and abundance is our birthright as humans and that it is stupid not to do so.
I agree with a lot of what he says on the power of technology and our need to create a better future. However, there are major tenets of his philosophy that don't just seem wrong to me, but dangerous. His piece got me thinking about my relationship with technology and innovation—how the world isn't simply split into those building things and those on the sidelines cynically criticizing them with ideas of the past. Andreessen's article shows us how useful ways of thinking about technology can be used to support bad motivations via false narratives and polarization.
Andreessen starts by telling us that we are being lied to about technology ruining our world, an idea that wasn't popular until recently. He describes how humanity lived in darkness and essential productivity and technological stagnation for thousands of years—until we invented things like indoor heating, air conditioning, electricity, industrial agriculture, and the internet. This is fundamentally misleading: there's not a single person complaining about AC and their deluxe washing machine. The complaints are directed at one very specific innovation: smartphones. Technology that has come around in the last 15 years, is in the hands of a few people, and that basically built up venture capitalists like himself. There has been legitimate reason in the last few years to think that technology (smartphones and related) have been used to manipulate elections (Cambridge Analytica in 2016), harm teenagers (Instagram hearings), and prey on the weak. The makers of the lightbulb didn't have to testify in Congress about their company helping pedophiles thrive and hiding the fact that their product makes teenage girls suicidal. Once again: no one is complaining about indoor heating corroding the fabric of society.
He credits the heightened cynicism of tech to a "mass demoralization campaign" under names like "trust and safety," "tech ethics," "sustainability," and "risk management." He thinks that the elites are lying to the masses in the form of these slogans and preventing the technologists from doing the work we were born to do. He clearly hasn't talked to a young person in a long time. We want clean energy, nuclear power, the eradication of disease, and cars that run on fucking banana peels. However, when we talk about "tech ethics" we're talking about algorithms pushing people to extremists to increase engagement. When we talk about "risk management" we're talking about companies trying to hide massive oil spills in the middle of the ocean. These are all legitimate concerns. Yes, they are sometimes implemented in stupid ways that impede progress, but that doesn't make them a pointless campaign by complainers.
Andreessen has some interesting thoughts on the elite:
I agree with a lot of what he says on the power of technology and our need to create a better future. However, there are major tenets of his philosophy that don't just seem wrong to me, but dangerous. His piece got me thinking about my relationship with technology and innovation—how the world isn't simply split into those building things and those on the sidelines cynically criticizing them with ideas of the past. Andreessen's article shows us how useful ways of thinking about technology can be used to support bad motivations via false narratives and polarization.
Andreessen starts by telling us that we are being lied to about technology ruining our world, an idea that wasn't popular until recently. He describes how humanity lived in darkness and essential productivity and technological stagnation for thousands of years—until we invented things like indoor heating, air conditioning, electricity, industrial agriculture, and the internet. This is fundamentally misleading: there's not a single person complaining about AC and their deluxe washing machine. The complaints are directed at one very specific innovation: smartphones. Technology that has come around in the last 15 years, is in the hands of a few people, and that basically built up venture capitalists like himself. There has been legitimate reason in the last few years to think that technology (smartphones and related) have been used to manipulate elections (Cambridge Analytica in 2016), harm teenagers (Instagram hearings), and prey on the weak. The makers of the lightbulb didn't have to testify in Congress about their company helping pedophiles thrive and hiding the fact that their product makes teenage girls suicidal. Once again: no one is complaining about indoor heating corroding the fabric of society.
He credits the heightened cynicism of tech to a "mass demoralization campaign" under names like "trust and safety," "tech ethics," "sustainability," and "risk management." He thinks that the elites are lying to the masses in the form of these slogans and preventing the technologists from doing the work we were born to do. He clearly hasn't talked to a young person in a long time. We want clean energy, nuclear power, the eradication of disease, and cars that run on fucking banana peels. However, when we talk about "tech ethics" we're talking about algorithms pushing people to extremists to increase engagement. When we talk about "risk management" we're talking about companies trying to hide massive oil spills in the middle of the ocean. These are all legitimate concerns. Yes, they are sometimes implemented in stupid ways that impede progress, but that doesn't make them a pointless campaign by complainers.
Andreessen has some interesting thoughts on the elite:
Our enemy is the ivory tower, the know-it-all credentialed expert worldview, indulging in abstract theories, luxury beliefs, social engineering, disconnected from the real world, delusional, unelected, and unaccountable – playing God with everyone else’s lives, with total insulation from the consequences.
I'd argue that the VCs and techno-intellectuals are the new ivory tower. People aren't idolizing and listening to professors; Elon Musk's opinion on Israel-Palestine seems to have more weight than that of an academic. VCs are all of the things that Andreessen describes as the ivory tower: commentating on every aspect of society, writing abstract papers on "the future," social engineering, and disconnected from the real world. The VCs are also unelected and unaccountable: funding scams like Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX and Adam Neumann's WeWork with no consequence. They even literally associate themselves with the divine. Andreessen ends his paper with a list of other techno-optimists, calling them "Patron Saints." DHH puts it best when it comes to so-called "angel investors:"
Let’s start at the bottom: People who make lots of little bets on many potential unicorns have christened themselves angels. Angels? Really? You’ve plucked your self-serving moniker from the parables of a religion that specifically and explicitly had its head honcho throw the money men out of the temple and proclaim a rich man less likely to make it into heaven than a camel through a needle’s eye. Okay then!
The VCs are happy to tout that technology has saved us and is going to save us in the future. It's easy to forget what they exactly do when they're telling you to listen up. They quite literally hold the key to their so-called future in the form of funding. You can't argue for a semi-libertarian world where everyone gets to improve technology and be the guard of the gates at the same time. The average reader can't go and start a mini-nuclear reactor in their backyard (unless they apply for funding of course). Many technological breakthroughs happen via tinkering and accident, not by presenting a slide deck to the wise boardroom in San Francisco who can then give you permission to change the world. "Sit tight and let us take care of your problems" is the message I hear. As much as it sounds like a call for people to participate in innovation, VCs are ultimately about winner-take-all dynamics. It's just how the business works. A company that makes a few million a year in profits isn't a success in Silicon Valley. You need Billions to have "abundance and infinity."
Realistic Techno-Optimism
Where does this leave us? There are a lot of great points in Andreessen's article, like how the panic over nuclear power cost us the opportunity to have abundant, cheap energy. Or how the narratives around de-growth and energy conservation prevent us from solving real issues. I believe that technology is amazing and that we need more tinkering, entrepreneurs, and innovation. I am, however, against the top-down direction of the future by the VC ivory tower and the promotion of the narrative that techno-optimists are "conquerors," "adventurers," and "heroes" as Andreessen puts it. Conquerors who should take the money he's offering to colonize whatever. This mindset creates egos that lead to fraud, condescension, and delusion—an all too common scene unfortunately.
It's possible to hold two contradicting ideas in your head. It's possible to want to solve problems by building the technology of the future while being cautious of its effects on society. It's possible to love everything that smartphones have made possible while acknowledging the epidemic of anxiety, adult ADHD, and nearsightedness caused by staring at a damn screen for 12 hours a day. It's possible to be excited about AI while worrying about its effects on people being able to do meaningful work. Getting involved in creating new things is great but the current skepticism about what technology has done to the world isn't just coming out of crumbling, outdated institutions. Believing this doesn't make me an "enemy" of humanity.
In his article It's Time to Dismantle the Technopoly, Cal Newport gives us an apt framework for thinking about techno-optimism and techno-cynicism. He describes an alternate approach called 'techno-selectionism,' which goes like so:
Where does this leave us? There are a lot of great points in Andreessen's article, like how the panic over nuclear power cost us the opportunity to have abundant, cheap energy. Or how the narratives around de-growth and energy conservation prevent us from solving real issues. I believe that technology is amazing and that we need more tinkering, entrepreneurs, and innovation. I am, however, against the top-down direction of the future by the VC ivory tower and the promotion of the narrative that techno-optimists are "conquerors," "adventurers," and "heroes" as Andreessen puts it. Conquerors who should take the money he's offering to colonize whatever. This mindset creates egos that lead to fraud, condescension, and delusion—an all too common scene unfortunately.
It's possible to hold two contradicting ideas in your head. It's possible to want to solve problems by building the technology of the future while being cautious of its effects on society. It's possible to love everything that smartphones have made possible while acknowledging the epidemic of anxiety, adult ADHD, and nearsightedness caused by staring at a damn screen for 12 hours a day. It's possible to be excited about AI while worrying about its effects on people being able to do meaningful work. Getting involved in creating new things is great but the current skepticism about what technology has done to the world isn't just coming out of crumbling, outdated institutions. Believing this doesn't make me an "enemy" of humanity.
In his article It's Time to Dismantle the Technopoly, Cal Newport gives us an apt framework for thinking about techno-optimism and techno-cynicism. He describes an alternate approach called 'techno-selectionism,' which goes like so:
Techno-selectionists believe that we should continue to encourage and reward people who experiment with what comes next. But they also know that some experiments end up causing more bad than good.
This is a wonderful way to think about technology. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World book also comes to mind. I don't want to live in a world where there is no conceivable alternative to wholesale technological adoption, where every innovation is seen as inevitable, and where bringing about any criticism of an elite-driven technocratic society is seen as heretical to the church of progress.