I stopped reading after the first sentence. Calling something "inherently political" is a self-fulfilling prophecy and intentionally so. It consistently turns out to be an attempt to lay the groundwork for expropriation. No one called the Internet "inherently political" until people built stuff there that other people wanted to control.
It’s a pretty non-controversial claim and argument about the interaction between technology and human society. If you read the post further you’d probably understand what is meant by that phrase. It’s not centered solely around electronics or the internet at all.
I agree that “inherently political” is usually a thought terminating cliche. What kinds of technologies are conditionally political?
The internet is a bad counterexample as it originated from a department of defense project and a number of other government programs that focused on communications and military applications.
I mean, all communications technology is inherently political. From the invention of speech and writing, to the printing press, radio, telephone, TV, and now internet and the communication mediums it allows.
This is because speech is inherently political at the end of the day.
Shout out to the apparently large class of programmers who think LLMs make it okay not to understand their own code, yet react with horror when someone suggests porting it to Go or Rust.
If you like this kind of thing, try reading Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon. Similar themes, full novel, even older. It makes for interesting reading in that it more obviously represents a "path not taken" by science fiction (and by science?!) but still has that early-sci-fi spirit of fundamental curiosity.
Seconded, but note some paths were taken (at least partially), as in some way is a meta-book were each paragraph comprises an idea that deserves a full book on its own. Some Stapledon readers were clearly inspired by it, e.g. Dyson spheres were first postulated there, and Borges got the "The Garden of Forking Paths" idea also from it.. and also Virtual Reality (not bad for 1937!) . Asimov was also an Stapledon admirer and he said that Stapledon expanded s.f. to a cosmic scale, so I think that Stapledon influence is also very present in The Last Question.
What article is he referencing in the fourth paragraph? The New Yorker one? I got the impression that it was careful in its reporting and by no means one-sided.
Seems pretty sleazy for him to associate that (based on no evidence!) with the violent attack.
First impressions: LOL, the blunt commentary in the HN thread title compared to the PR-speak of the fb.com post.
Second thoughts: Actually the fb.com post is more transparent than I'd have predicted. Not bad at all. Of course it helps that they're delivering good news!
This very closely resembles my own experience, right down to the timeline.
I don't have an answer, but just seeing this thread has been cathartic for me.
Some of the options I'm considering (all speculative):
- It's okay to be a "hired gun" and switch companies every few years just to ensure you stay interested. Some people's minds are stimulated by novelty and learning; that's not a bad thing! In fact some of the engineers I most respect work as consultants not traditional employees.
- Try working at a more "stodgy" company. Your average Fortune 500 employs more developers than most unicorns and is probably a decade behind the curve in terms of technology-- maybe you can go to one of those, take it easy, and be a hero.
- If it's an option financially, "hire yourself" for a few months to go do a passion project-- hobbyist app? major OSS improvement? creative endeavor?-- and see how it feels.
https://cr.usembassy.gov/sections-offices/aphis/screwworm-pr...
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