Ezra Klein, The Reactionary Futurism of Marc Andreessen, NYTimes, Ocr. 26, 2023.
Now Andreessen has distilled the whole ideology to a procession of stark bullet points in his latest missive, the buzzy, bizarre “Techno-Optimist Manifesto.” I think it ill named. What makes it distinctive is not its views on technology, which are crude for a technologist of Andreessen’s stature. Rather, it’s the pairing of the reactionary’s sodden take on modern society with the futurist’s starry imagining of the bright tomorrow. So call it what it is: reactionary futurism.
Andreessen’s argument is simple: Technology is good. Very good. Those who stand in its way are bad. He is clear on who they are, in a section titled simply “The Enemy.” The list is long, ranging from “anti-greatness” to “statism” to “corruption” to “the ivory tower” to “cartels” to “bureaucracy” to “socialism” to “abstract theories” to anyone “disconnected from the real world … playing God with everyone else’s lives” (which arguably describes the kinds of technologists Andreessen is calling forth, but I digress). It ends — I kid you not — on a quotation from Nietzsche. “The earth has become small, and on it hops the Last Man, who makes everything small.”
So who is it, exactly, who extinguishes the dancing star within the human soul?
Our present society has been subjected to a mass demoralization campaign for six decades — against technology and against life — under varying names like “existential risk,” “sustainability,” “E.S.G.,” “sustainable development goals,” “social responsibility,” “stakeholder capitalism,” “precautionary principle,” “trust and safety,” “tech ethics,” “risk management,” “degrowth,” “the limits of growth.”
The enemy, in other words, is anything or anyone who might seek to yoke technology to social goals or structures, who would erect guardrails or impose limits on the John Galts of tomorrow.
Later:
Andreessen focuses at some length on the nuclear future he believes we’ve been denied — I’d agree that regulation has been too heavy-handed in that arena, though it’s worth noting that nuclear power has faced similar problems across a range of countries with very different cultures and regulatory systems — but curiously ignores the stunning advances in solar and wind and battery power that public policy has delivered.
Why does that remarkable success go unmentioned? Perhaps because it makes heroes of Andreessen’s preferred villains. He yearns for a kind of person, not just a kind of technology. “We believe in ambition, aggression, persistence, relentlessness — strength,” he writes, italics included. “We believe in merit and achievement. We believe in bravery, in courage.”
Andreessen is not entirely wide of the mark here. There are ways in which these virtues have become undervalued, in which the left, in particular, has a dysfunctional relationship with individual achievement and entrepreneurial élan. But what’s needed is a synthesis Andreessen doesn’t even attempt, preferring the aesthetic of the Übermensch to the complexities of the age.
I am TechBro, hear me roar:
“We are not primitives, cowering in fear of the lightning bolt,” Andreessen writes. “We are the apex predator; the lightning works for us.” Or so we want to believe. I am more of a McLuhanite in this — though, given Andreessen’s affection for Nietzsche, perhaps a quote of his is what we need here. “If you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” It is hard to read Andreessen’s manifesto, with its chopped-up paragraphs and its blunt jabs of thought delivered for maximum engagement and polarization, and not feel that Andreessen now reflects the medium in which he has made his home: X. He doesn’t just write in the way the medium rewards. He increasingly seems to think in its house style, too.
The end:
Reactionary futurism is accelerationist in affect but deccelerationist in practice. Treating so much of society with such withering contempt will not speed up a better future. It will turn people against the politics and policies of growth, just as it did before. Trust is the most essential technology of all.
There's more at the link.
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Bonus: Klein's article is getting a lot of replies. Here's one by RM2Ride that gets right to the point:
As a denizen of Silicon Valley, to me Adreesen's screed seems merely a representation of the energy that drives so many men (mostly) of this place: unfettered faith in "technology" over interpersonal relationship building; vindictiveness that seems to stem from being unpopular during formative developmental years; and massive insecurity at never knowing whether their lack of popularity and inability to build actual trusting human relationships has been over-written by their ability to have managed - by luck or invention - to have made piles of cash.
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