Steve Jobs would have probably fired whoever suggested this ad, at best. He always saw the Mac as an enabler of and conduit for peoples' creativity, not a replacement for other forms of it.
Jobs' death is truly tragic in the context that Apple - and by extension, the rest of the tech world - could have gone in a very different direction if he were still around. He would probably be screaming his head off at the idea of generative AI.
Seriously and sincerely, I'd like to hear a dozen definitions of what
people think that "mission" is in 2024.
I think we long departed from "making the world a better place". And
yet the change simply cannot be explained by greed, money, or
obsession with growth.
Surely a lot of the venture capitalists that frequent this forum must
be as confused as the next person if they still hold on to the ideal
of "doing good with money".
What I see is the rise of a terrifying quasi-religious anti-humanist
cult with overtones of masochism and self-hatred (of human life).
I'm no big fan of Steve Jobs, but clearly he would be horrified by
many of the anti-human sentiments expressed daily in forums like this.
Is it too late to redefine digital technology as humane, and return to
the roots of SV [0] ?
Between e/acc+singularity, hyper-libertarianism and the actual locked-in, rent-seeking, culture-choking techno-feudalism we're getting, it's always been pretty obvious to me that the "mission" is to become the secular equivalent of a god, and then reign eternal, just like the world-building genre of games primes them for.
Too bad it's a big club and everybody here won't be in it, eh.
> Too bad it's a big club and everybody here won't be in it, eh.
There is some uncomfortable truth in this.
Those who identify with technology, and take for granted being its
masters, controllers and benefactors, end up the most disappointed.
The hoi polloi are happily indifferent to the cargo cult of shiny
stuff that comes and goes, which they buy because their friend got
one.
But those intelligent enough to know what we could have had, what's
possible and what's lost, will feel betrayed by larger forces that
nobody controls, whatever "big club" you imagine yourself in.
It's one thing for a man to lose to lose his faith. It's something
else when a priest does.
Well, most revolutions succeed when the overproduced elites join the masses to overthrow the rulers. So it's probably a good thing in this case if the priests lose their faith, as long as they do it quickly enough. Otherwise we'll all just be NPCs in Altman's and Zuckerberg's metaverses.
Silicon Valley on a mission