“Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing [technology executives]. You need to think of [them] the way you think of a lawn mower. You don’t anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it’ll chop it off, the end. You don’t think ‘oh, the lawnmower hates me’ - lawnmower doesn’t give a shit about you, lawnmower can’t hate you. Don’t anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don’t fall into that trap about [technology executives].”
– Brian Cantrill (Originally about Larry Ellison specifically)
Unfortunately, you can’t just politely ignore people with an eleven-to-thirteen-digit line of credit. That much of a hand in the consumption habits of the richest country on earth commands attention whether you like what they’re saying or not.
The real question is whether you’re going to be a WaPo-style hack stenographer who shows up at these events and whispers “These people are fairy wizards who can do real God-magic and transform the universe into a Science Fantasy wonderland!” Or you come at it from the Ed Zitron / Molly White / Riley Quinn / Any Sane Person at the Financial Times perspective, tearing into the actual balance sheets and analyzing the runways of these bloated economy leeches, and guestimating what future impact their continued operation will have on the rest of the domestic and global economies.
Tech Execs have to be taken seriously but not literally. When Zuck says he wants a trillion dollar spending line on datacenters to supercharge humanity, you have to read that with the same gravitas as a weather forecaster predicting a Cat-5 hurricane making landfall.
You nailed it. Attention accrues to them because of their money and the power it gives them, not the other way around. Without his money and control of OpenAI, Altman would be - along with Elon Musk - just another dork posting on Reddit during his shift at the electronics store, and would get the attendant amount of public attention. He’s no smarter or dumber than the average guy, but we don’t devote news articles to whatever the average guy thinks about something he heard on a podcast during his commute.
The following doesn’t apply to everybody in technology, but it applies to enough of them: At some point STEM education was the only thing the Olds cared about because of something something Asia, and now we have a couple of generations that are highly educated on paper and comically unaware of the complexity of the world outside of WordPress plugins.
I was going to say it’s not just technology executives. I’m glad the author addressed this too. It’s the whole industry.
People do this to ourselves too. How often do people see a tech nerd and think they’re some sort of all knowing demigod.
“You’re a tech guy. Here fix my thing.”
“Tell me about such and such complex topic complete outside of your niche professional expertise but you’re of the All Knowing so opine me your All Knowing wisdom.”
Everybody just fucking stop already.
You trigger their autistic word vomit. They use an excessive amount of tech jargon you don’t understand. So people assume it must be profound insight. In fact 99% of what they’re saying is complete non-sense.
