<
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/tech-billionaires-adam-becker-1235381649/>
"Fresh off a Ph.D. in astrophysics, science journalist Adam Becker moved to
Silicon Valley with an academic’s acclimation to hearing the word “no.” “In
academic science, you need to doubt yourself,” he says. “That’s essential to
the process.” So it was strange to find himself suddenly surrounded by a
culture that branded itself as data-oriented and scientific but where, he soon
came to realize, the ideas were more grounded in science fiction than in actual
science and the grip on reality was tenuous at best. “What this sort of
crystallized for me,” says Becker, “was that these tech guys — who people think
of as knowing a lot about science — actually, don’t really know anything about
science at all.”
In
More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s
Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity, published this spring, Becker
subjects Silicon Valley’s ideology to some much-needed critical scrutiny,
poking holes in — and a decent amount of fun at — the outlandish ideas that so
many tech billionaires take as gospel. In so doing, he champions reality while
also exposing the dangers of letting the tech billionaires push us toward a
future that could never actually exist. “The title of the book is
More
Everything Forever,” says Becker. “But the secret title of the book, like, in
my heart is
These Fucking People.”
Over several Zooms,
Rolling Stone recently chatted with Becker about these
fucking people, their magical thinking, and what the rest of us can do to fight
for a reality that works for us."
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
