The Lie of the Tech Sector

The lie of the tech sector is that it is up to much of anything new at all.

"Technology" discourse has always mostly been the repackaging stale products and reactionary politics.

The truth of the tech sector is the same old story of assholes wanting all the money and power but no responsibility or accountability.

Tech disruption is mostly deregulation.

Tech "sharing" is mostly wealth concentration.

Tech innovation is mostly PR for the rich.

Digitization is mostly precarization.

What Has Changed Here

Adapted and Upgraded from a comment in the Moot:

Robot Gods, genetic enhancement and longevity, artificial meat, immersive virtuality, techno-abundance nano robo digi bio blah blah blah blah, the terms never changing, the greedhead promises and skeery sfnal threats never happening, but always oh so very important to talk about, year after year after year after year, as privileged mediocrities game the economy and political system in the most boring serially failed utterly predictably idiotic ways (the very real threats being the social ones mediated by and distracted from via tech, natch). You know, I could re-run the first ten years of this blog, just changing the names of the latest tech soopergeniuses as they make exactly identically stupid claims I railed against before and I would presumably resume my place as go-to incendiary tech critic. I definitely hear you when you say you'll choke the latest Very Serious AI-qua-existential-threat drivel down. My righteous rage, and the pleasure I once took in ridiculing tech hucksters, has long since been eclipsed by demoralization. Trump's America is the futurological future we've been waiting for, a shriveled white dick with a megaphone peddling late-nite infomercials promising easy cash and sexy youth to ignorant rubes over a stinking landfill under a gray snowfall of cremated ashes.

Touched By An Angel

Pro-tip: Don't let the toxic mixture of fear and laziness fuck with your goals, ambition and productivity. — Katya (@katya_zamo) July 14, 2015

@katya_zamo What if your goals, ambition, and productivity depend on a toxic mixture of fear and laziness? — Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) July 14, 2015

Then YOU GO GIRL! You got this girl! — Katya (@katya_zamo) September 6, 2017

There Is No AI

Nothing that is being called "AI" these days is actual AI -- which is not to deny how dangerous what passes for AI these days happens to be. The threat of "AI" today is entirely the threat of intelligent designers, owners, and users abusing computers in predictably unscrupulous and reckless ways. Elon Musk and his ilk are not so much warning us of the dangers of AI as they are profitably indulging in them while distracting the marks with shiny sfnal objects. It may be useful to recall "AI" discourse has its (1) robocultic True Believers and ideologues for whom AI cannot fail, only be failed; its (2) opportunistic evangelical hucksters/VC tech-types out to rationalize parochial tech profits with hyped promises and threats; and its (3) many ignorant, opportunistic tech-infotainment fluffers in the advertorial press and in various consumer fandoms. These constituencies overlap, supplement, complement one another, provide wiggle room and contexts for one another (most discourses and organized movements exhibit this sort of complexity and dynamism, AI discourse is no different).