I don’t have a solution either. Merely a plug for “Bullshit Jobs.” Clearly, Graeber spent time in sclerotic academic institutions both in the US and in Britain (where the officiousness is so high!). Typing on my 5 year old iPhone…
We have flying cars. They're called helicopters. The cheapest currently on the market costs $46K. But if there were a good reason to have them in large numbers, mass production would bring the costs down. The problem is that as soon as you think about it, the idea of having even a thousand of them in the same airspace at any given time would be a disaster
It's also worth noting that there was a brief 1980's craze for ultralight airplanes, an affordable kind that can be manned by a single person. My dad started a company to build and sell them, and had a bunch of early orders. Then in 1982 a reporter died on camera while flying one, as part of some news program. People canceled their orders and my dad had to fold his company.
Has Thiel’s ideology changed much since then? Even now he kind of proposes that same ideas. His ideology always seemed more feudal and oligarchic than libertarian in my eyes though. Maybe it just naturally goes hand in hand :L
I've been waiting for someone to write a harsh and truthful article that merely points out that Apple has been releasing the same product with the same fundamental components for a decade or more now. Needs to be written.
Until its last couple of decades, the 20th century idea of progress was all about transport - Jet Age, Space Age and so on. It turned out that the real action was in information and communications. And while we haven't seen any dazzling new tech (at least until AI comes along), we're still learning to use what we have. Remote work is the big example - it's been feasible for a long time, but it only happened with the pandemic, and the reinvention of what used to be office work is still going on.
I don’t have a solution either. Merely a plug for “Bullshit Jobs.” Clearly, Graeber spent time in sclerotic academic institutions both in the US and in Britain (where the officiousness is so high!). Typing on my 5 year old iPhone…
Have you read "The Utopia of Rules?" His critiques of academia therein are both savage and spot on.
No but I’m adding to my list! No surprise he was denied tenure at my fine institution:) his writing is wonderful and wickedly funny
We have flying cars. They're called helicopters. The cheapest currently on the market costs $46K. But if there were a good reason to have them in large numbers, mass production would bring the costs down. The problem is that as soon as you think about it, the idea of having even a thousand of them in the same airspace at any given time would be a disaster
https://composite-fx.com/models/xel/
It's also worth noting that there was a brief 1980's craze for ultralight airplanes, an affordable kind that can be manned by a single person. My dad started a company to build and sell them, and had a bunch of early orders. Then in 1982 a reporter died on camera while flying one, as part of some news program. People canceled their orders and my dad had to fold his company.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1982/06/28/host-dies-filming-tv-segment/5b861812-c83e-4857-bc7c-3363543561dd/
Has Thiel’s ideology changed much since then? Even now he kind of proposes that same ideas. His ideology always seemed more feudal and oligarchic than libertarian in my eyes though. Maybe it just naturally goes hand in hand :L
I've been waiting for someone to write a harsh and truthful article that merely points out that Apple has been releasing the same product with the same fundamental components for a decade or more now. Needs to be written.
The hard spot of loving the essay and loving Figma
Until its last couple of decades, the 20th century idea of progress was all about transport - Jet Age, Space Age and so on. It turned out that the real action was in information and communications. And while we haven't seen any dazzling new tech (at least until AI comes along), we're still learning to use what we have. Remote work is the big example - it's been feasible for a long time, but it only happened with the pandemic, and the reinvention of what used to be office work is still going on.