- This video is brought to you by Keeps.
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What's up, guys? Michael here.
The last couple of years have taught us a lot.
Like the value of social ties and community,
and the value of leading with SPEAR.
But mostly, we've learned
how absolutely inextricable technology is
from our daily lives.
And if one Harvard dropout has his way,
the boundary between our physical and digital selves
is only going to get blurrier.
In short, our future looks and feels
more like science fiction than ever before.
Maybe that's not so surprising:
the most powerful people in tech,
from the co-founders of Google to Elon Musk,
invariably cite famous works of sci-fi
as formative influences.
And while sci-fi has its fair share of cool lasers
and sleek hairdos,
it's also uniquely positioned to explore big ideas.
So what happens when these big ideas
influence the rich and powerful?
Let's find out in this Wisecrack Edition:
How Tech Bros Get Sci-Fi So Wrong.
Oh, and spoilers ahead for a few great works of sci-fi
and the future of humanity.
But before we get into it,
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Now, back to the show.
Sci-fi has always inspired real-world tech.
What's arguably the first sci-fi movie,
Fritz Lang's 1929 film "Woman in the Moon,"
helped humanity add space flight to its to-do list.
Rocketry pioneer Hermann Oberth
consulted with Lang to envision the space shuttle,
bringing in ideas like multi-stage rockets
and the take-off countdown that,
for both practical and aesthetic reasons,
have become foundational to space travel.
The movie was also beloved by America's Pet Nazi,
Wernher von Braun,
who went on to design the Apollo spacecraft.
In the wider view, countless figures
across science, tech, and industry,
including Edwin Hubble,
cite early sci-fi novelist Jules Verne as a key inspiration.
One of the Apollo 8 astronauts, Frank Borman,
even went so far as to say
that, "In a very real sense,
Jules Verne is one of the pioneers of the space age."
Today's technologists are no different;
they invariably cite both classic and contemporary sci-fi
as formative inspirations.
Much of Silicon Valley
treats the Neal Stephenson novel, "Snow Crash"
as some kind of holy text.
That includes Mark Zuckerburg,
who apparently made it required reading for new recruits.
Elon Musk says that Isaac Asimov's "Foundation"
was key to his founding SpaceX,
and is open about his love
of Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series.
And Peter Thiel has described his vision of the future
as uniquely inspired by sci-fi writer Robert A. Heinlein.
It's no surprise that an industry dominated by nerds
has some geeky shared interests.
But while sci-fi is a wide genre,
some works are invoked a lot more than others.
In addition to the aforementioned "Foundation" series
and "Snow Crash,"
"Star Trek" rounds out the big three.
Perhaps more so than any other work,
"Snow Crash" has wielded incredible influence
over Silicon Valley.
Everyone who's anyone in tech
has named it as a big inspiration,
from Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page,
to Peter Thiel, and, perhaps most fatefully,
Mark Zuckerburg.
It's easy to see why they're all so keen on it.
A key part of the novel's world is the Metaverse,
a sort of digital wild west
where coders and techies reign supreme.
With just a VR headset and a steady internet connection,
people can live almost entirely in the Metaverse,
coming out only for short periods to do dumb (beep),
like eat and learn their children's names.
And, if people like The Zucc get their way,
the Metaverse will soon become a thing we can't ignore.
He even changed his company's name to Meta
to show just how committed he is.
And game platforms like Fortnite and Roblox
are both inspired by,
and trying to manifest their own versions of, the Metaverse.
Then, there's "Foundation,"
which Elon Musk, in particular, has lauded,
calling it fundamental to the creation of SpaceX.
The TL;DR of "Foundation"
is one big-brain man is so good at math
that he can accurately predict the future.
He discovers that the Galactic Empire is doomed,
so he takes a bunch of the best scientists to another planet
to build a new Empire: a scientific meritocracy.
The series is rooted in that old chestnut,
American exceptionalism,
which, as your seventh-grade
social studies teacher told you,
basically just means America is uniquely great.
This notion especially took off after World War II,
where America established its dominance.
In its early chapters,
"Foundation" seems to endorse this view.
But Asimov wrote the "Foundation" series over a long period,
with a nearly three-decade gap in the middle,
and the core ideas he communicated changed
to reflect the times.
By the end of the series,
"Foundation" had challenged the post-war ideas at its core,
exploring the follies of imperialism and exceptionalism
within the context of the Second Galactic Empire.
Basically, the protagonist's initial goal
of single-handedly starting this new world
is sharply critiqued.
In fact, Asimov made it well-known
that he based the overall arc of the series
on "The History of the Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire."
But the big boys of Silicon Valley
also have some more mainstream sci-fi interests.
Take "Star Trek."
We probably don't need to explain this classic to you,
with its utopian Federation of Planets
and exploration of complex social and philosophical issues.
It's a series defined by its idealism
and total stanning of justice and equality.
People who worked with Steve Jobs
named his ability to push you
to do seemingly impossible things
his reality distortion field,
a term straight out of the "Trek."
And real-life Scrooge McDuck, Jeff Bezos,
has been outspoken about the influence
that the show has had on him.
He almost named Amazon makeitso.com,
after Picard's famous catchphrase.
- Make it so.
- And the complex voice-controlled computers
of the "Enterprise" were a direct inspiration for Alexa.
Perhaps most tellingly,
Bezos ended his high school valedictorian speech
with a "Star Trek" quote.
He said, "Space, the final frontier.
Meet me there."
Bezos also tacitly forced William Shatner
to look at his childhood "Trek" fan art.
Billionaires: they're just as embarrassing as us!
So we've established the enormous influence
sci-fi has had on Silicon Valley.
And hey, in some ways,
knowing that these people enjoy this genre is kinda cool.
And when some of the most powerful people in the world
are sci-fi nerds,
it's going to have an impact on the culture.
But even if they share the interests of the hoi polloi,
their lives are so radically different from ours
that they may be taking away something totally different
from our shared sci-fi faves.
Let's go back to "Snow Crash,"
which is set in a real-world dystopia.
Everyone lives in Burbclaves,
which are described as,
"A city-state with its own constitution:
a border, laws, cops, everything."
Everything within these Burbclaves has been corporatized,
including the law, meaning that big corporations can, say,
legally kill you for minor criminal infractions.
So if you work for say, Amazon,
you would likely live in the Amazon Burbclave.
In the world of "Snow Crash,"
corporations basically have full control
over government and society;
not that this could ever happen in our world.
And this has forced those seeking freedom
into the Metaverse,
a place free from corporate control.
It's essentially an anarchist technocracy,
and the only boundaries are set
by the technology you have access to.
This is where companies like Meta miss the point.
Because even if other companies contribute to the metaverse,
Meta is always going to have more control.
If they host the servers,
if their infrastructure is what it's built upon,
then the Metaverse will never be free
from corporate oversight.
Meta isn't going to allow anyone with enough coding chops
to mess around with the source code
because the company has invested time, money,
and brainpower into its design.
The Metaverse of Zuckerberg's dream
is one that's been divvied up
into multiple, corporate-controlled walled gardens,
each with their own terms of service and currencies.
This ironically resembles
the hellish corporate reality of "Snow Crash"
more than it's anarchist digital Metaverse.
Here, a tech billionaire with the unique ability
to turn a sci-fi vision into reality
seems to have missed the critique
at the heart of that fictional vision.
And this isn't the only example
of a tech bro missing some vital points
from their favorite content.
Take "Foundation."
When Musk talks about escaping climate change
by moving humanity to Mars,
a feat that only he is brave or willing enough to undertake,
it's easy to see the connection.
Musk gets to step into the role of the big-brain man
who anticipates our doom
and works as a private entity to solve the problem.
But in being the man who built,
and therefore owns and operates his proposed Martian colony,
Musk also takes the role of the head of the meritocracy.
He contributed the most, so he's in charge.
However, in painfully ironic news,
that's the very concept
that the "Foundation" series explicitly disavows.
But in Musk's fantasy,
he is the exceptional man
with both an idea and the scientific know-how to realize it.
Every launch that SpaceX undertakes
has the underlying goal
of building towards Mars' colonization.
But a one-man-led colonization mission in Foundation
isn't the solution, it's a recipe for social collapse.
So, not exactly something
the average tech billionaire
should be looking to imitate, right?
But we do have one tech bro
whose role model is objectively a pretty good guy,
and a true bald king.
Jeff Bezos is such a big Trekker
that he says he idolizes "Enterprise" captain
Jean-Luc Picard.
Which is interesting, because Picard is defined
by his strong sense of ethics and morals,
arguably even more than other captains in the series.
Whereas Kirk is brash and headstrong,
Picard is measured and deliberate.
Kirk will make mistakes and do the right thing eventually,
while Picard will agonize over the decision
to avoid making the mistake in the first place.
Now, we're not claiming
that Bezos doesn't consider all his options
before making a decision.
You don't get to be a big-time capitalist baron
without thinking things through.
But there is a disconnect
between the example that Picard sets,
and Bezos' public-facing actions.
Here's a couple of Picard quotes to show what we mean.
In "First Contact," he says...
- The acquisition of wealth
is no longer the driving force of our lives.
We work to better ourselves
and the rest of humanity.
- In "Next Generation," he says...
- The first time any man's freedom
is trodden on,
we're all damaged.
- And also in "Next Generation,"
- I have to weigh the good of the many
against the needs of the individual,
and try to balance them as realistically as possible.
- These aren't outliers;
they all demonstrate Picard's fundamental character.
He's all about altruism and bettering mankind at large.
In contrast, Jeff Bezos has a literally unspendable amount
of personal wealth, which he keeps adding to.
- It was fine being
the second-wealthiest person in the world.
That actually worked fine.
- And Amazon has roundly been exposed
for exploiting workers.
Regardless of your stance on those issues
and whether or not you agree with Picard,
Bezos' actions are clearly contradictory
to the fictional man he idolizes.
If Picard were real and he met Bezos,
it's clear he'd bar his application to the Federation.
So who cares if figures like Musk, Zuckerburg, and Bezos
are big old sci-fi nerds with poor critical reading skills?
Honestly, everybody should,
due to their outsize influence on government and society.
This implication is especially stark
when you compare the wealth of these heads of Big Tech
to, say, national space agencies like NASA,
which are vastly underfunded.
So our forays into the galaxy
are yoked into a billionaire space race
that's enmeshed with the egos of the bros involved.
What's more, Big Tech has a ridiculous amount of money
to spend on lobbying,
tailoring legislation to best suit their needs,
arguably at the expense of everybody else.
Zuckerburg and Meta
are already trying to colonize the internet
in developing nations,
transforming it into some VR-driven,
hyper-monetized corpoland
that would fundamentally change
how we interact with one another.
Digital platforms have become a key aspect
of our social interactions,
and the people in charge of them
have relative freedom to do whatever they want.
Zuckerberg and the Metaverse,
Musk and his Mars Colonies,
Bezos and wearing cowboy hats:
they're all billionaire passion projects that either are,
or have the potential to,
fundamentally change reality for all of us
in ways both tangible and conceptual.
Driven by their love for,
but perhaps not coherent understanding of, sci-fi,
these platforms are shaping the world we live in,
and what we imagine that future could look like.
With so much at stake,
perhaps it's no wonder that William Gibson,
one of the most prophetic sci-fi authors of all time,
once said that he has explicitly decided
not to write certain ideas into his books
because he worried that they'd be misunderstood,
and possibly imitated.
And who are we to not listen to the wisdom
of the original cyberpunk?
But what do you guys think?
Apart from using anti-trust laws
to break up tech monopolies,
making them pay their taxes,
and revoking all of their library cards,
is there anything that can be done?
Should we do anything at all
or are they all free to take what they want from sci-fi
and throw away what doesn't suit?
Let us know what you think in the comments.
Big thanks to all our patrons
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As always, thanks for watching,
and we'll see you in space!
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