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Tech Billionaires Need to Stop Trying to Make the Science Fiction They Grew Up on Real
(www.scientificamerican.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023
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I wouldn't mind star trek apart from the whole WWII thing. But what they're aspiring to is worse both coming and going.
In the Trek timeline the Bell Riots seem more plausible than ever these days. And they have to go through WWIII before humanity collectively pulls its head out of its ass and manages to finally do better. The more I think about it lately (due to watching a lot of ST shows) the more I think we stand no chance of changing until after we totally ruin everything...assuming we survive, of course.
I guess they missed the heavy implications in much of science fiction as a grave warning to NOT DO THINGS THIS WAY and instead read things like Brave New World, Starship Troopers, Neuromancer, and others with distopian corporate oligarchies or fascist space empires as aspirational. I guess your perspective is a little skewed when you're born wearing the boot versus being the ground into the muck by it.
If only they'd read a little more Ursula K. LeGuin and Octavia Butler instead of Ayn Rand and Robert Heinlein. But then again, I guess if they had then they might not be billionaires today.
What a crap opinion piece. If we didn't have rich people dreaming of how to do scifi things we probably wouldn't have all the shit we have now. Going to space. Computers. Medical advancements etc.
Except everything you mentioned came from the minds and hands of moderately paid middle-class engineers not the good graces of a rich person.
Absolutely, however without wishful thinking rich people backing those moderately paid much smarter people we would have far less. I'm not for billionaires.. but if we did get rid of them we'd need a serious overhaul on funding for those ventures.
Rich people didn’t pay for anyone to go to the moon, US taxpayers did.
Rich people didn’t dream up the idea, it’s been in every child’s dreams. If anything sci-fi authors are not typically rich.
Rich people don’t dream up the various tech to get there, people like my grandfather did.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billionaire
There are twice as many billionaires now than there were in 2008/9. We didn’t have billionaires and wealth concentration in the 60s like we do now. Yet we still accomplished all that.
We don’t need them, we never did.
Rich philanthropists have been funding universities and colleges, which is where most of this technology actually comes from. You're speaking of the government sector and you're not wrong but is the wealthy that have been funding most of the private sector advancements. Again, I have no love for billionaires. You're right, we don't need them. This makes it sound like we shouldn't be aspiring at all for the stars.
Rich philanthropists have been funding universities and colleges, which is where most of this technology actually comes from.
And they wouldnt have to if everything wasnt as commodified to press the last cent out of it just so they can make a profit. Philanthropy is a scam invented by rich people to give back crumbs of the riches they stole to feel good about themselves and "justify" their existence.