Let Us Remember

Remember when technology had promise?

Last time, on Days of Our Lives….

Can you hear the music? I can.

Was your family Days fans or General Hospital fans? You couldn’t really be both, because for a significant portion of their runtimes, Days and GH ran at the same time.

My cousin was the first person to master prerecording on the VCR for this exact reason. She kept detailed daily notes for all of her soaps. She and my aunt had a tape log. The tapes were numbered, and then each tape would have hour slots on the tape log so that you could mark what days were recorded on what tapes.

Each weekend, they would diligently sit down, watch as much as they could, update the logs of what could be recorded over, and what needed to be kept. By the mid nineties, there were as many VHS tapes as there were old National Geographics. (Why yes, we’re all neurodivergent, why do you ask?)

This was a precision operation that any good project manager would have been proud of. I’m reasonably sure my grandpa was proud, or he’d have run the whole operation out of his living room.

Age based parasocial relationships—

And how it applies to tech.

According to the Boomers, and the Greatest Generation before them, Millennials ruined everything. Gen X will be conveniently left out of this conversation, like we’re left out of every other conversation.

I can say that the research is very clear on one thing that Millennials have ruined—risk tolerance.

Turns out, being abandoned to raise yourself like a pack of feral wolves has had an interesting side effect. You all take much better care of yourselves. You’ve optimized your entire lives, up to and including your bodies. Your generation drinks less, smokes less, exercises more, and, if we’re being honest about it, probably does it all without much joy or enthusiasm.

At 45, I am considered the youngest of Gen X. Sometimes, the oldest of Millennials. I tend to identify most with the micro generation of Xennial, or my personal favorite, the Oregon Trail generation. In general, we have very little power, purchasing or otherwise. Because most of us were just starting out in 2001 when 9/11 happened, and then got our feet knocked out from under us again in 2008. Xennials have one of the lowest rates of homeownership in history.

There is one thing that’s arguably ours, though. AI.

I’m starting to think it’s why so many in our generation are so fanatic about it.

Many of the industries biggest players—Zuck, Altman, and Amodei, among others, are our age. Never underestimate the power of a peer group for developing parasocial relationships, especially not when it’s indoctrinated in us from birth. Unless you had alternative education, you spent pretty much the first eighteen years of your life in the company of your age peers, more if you have advanced degrees.

And, because of the speed of technological innovation, it has bonded us together in a kind of collective trauma WITH our peers.

But what does it mean, and how should we unpack these relationships?

This might take a minute, but trust me. As the kids like to say, let me cook.

There are no grown ups. Sorry.

We've talked about the proximal power of the people developing AI.

There is no more real seat of power than the White House.

And this administration had a plan.

They have executed it, at scale.

And yet…when it comes to AI, it is clear that there are absolutely no fucking grown ups at the table. Instead, the entire field seems populated with overgrown manchildren living out their best Revenge of the Nerds lives. (Have you ever rewatched that movie? Not only has it aged poorly, you’ll realize how abusive it was from the start.)

The best we get is White House AI czar David Sacks.

And, proving exactly how much of a circle jerk all of this is, he’s deeply embedded in dozens of companies that will rise or fall on the back of AI. But all of venture capital is. And here, like everywhere else, relationship reigns supreme.

Imagine...whirled peas.

Many of these relationships go back years, even decades, in some cases.

In fact, OpenAI was formed almost exactly a decade ago, on the idea that AGI was coming, and if it was, it should be open and accessible to everyone. It’s important to remember that mission, because it has diverged so far from where OpenAI is today that the company has become barely recognizable.

Back in 2015, the Friendsgiving table was PACKED. For the record, I am only speculating based on the emails that have been released, (which, if you’re a masochist, and you have a week, you can find here). I don’t know if there actually WAS a Friendsgiving. But if there was, it was certainly not a potluck.

Still, the players involved now had the same kind of relationships with each other then, that Jeffrey Epstein did with everyone who ever boarded his jet.

Many of the names you know. Most of them you don’t, but they’re moving massive amounts of influence all the same. Because it’s not about the money. It’s never been about the money. Money is only a means to the end, and the end is influence.

But the names you know—Musk, Altman, Thiel, Ellison, Sacks—all of these people have been talking to each other about AGI for over a decade.

Line go up!!!!

I’ve spent a lot of time this year learning about venture capital and private equity.

I think most people would be shocked at just how much money is available, and how relatively easy it is to get it. Tech investment in particular is…a wild ride. Like every other Ponzi scheme before it, all you really have to do is have a slightly different take, and a willingness to sell your soul to the highest bidder.

There are incubators and accelerators, fund submissions, grant applications, and so. fucking. many. pitch competitions.

I’ve been offered a lot of money.

And I’ve said no to all of it.

Almost all of it has too many strings. Too much equity for too little gain. Plus, and not for nothing, who I get in bed with as a media company, well, that obviously matters to me.

One of the most important books I’ve ever read is The 48 Laws of Power, by Robert Greene. It’s one of the many books that I have a physical, digital, and audio copy of. (The fact that no one has figured out how to bundle all of this shit together while giving a higher percentage of the profit to authors is a deliberate choice—but we'll get to that.)

Once you understand how the levers of power work, you will never not see them in action.

And ALL relationships are transactional.

It’s actually one of the things that makes Trump so dangerous—people really like him, because they benefit from that transaction. And, among liberals in particular, there’s this intense desire to paint him and everyone who stands with him as evil, but the problem is, NONE OF THEM SEE THEMSELVES THAT WAY.

They see themselves as basically good people who are benefitting from a transaction.

And this is where autists in particular struggle, because morality is not a grey area to us. It may not be the same as society’s moral code, especially if there aren’t good reasons for why a rule exists, but you have a clearly defined code. PLUS, and this matters, so many of the folks in tech are autistic.

They might be delusional, but for them tech optimism makes SENSE. It’s been enormously beneficial to their lives, after all. It took them from painfully shy outcasts to being the guys with all the money, and now they get to marry supermodels and buy islands, even if they don’t actually have any power.

In other words, they believe almost all of what they’re saying.

Trust equals belief.

Here’s the thing.

Belief is the foundation of all of this.

Because relationships are built on TRUST.

If I trust you, then I believe you.

If I violate your trust, then you are less likely to believe me the next time. Unless of course, I do it deliberately, and then love bomb you afterward. Research suggests that it takes a person an average of seven times to leave domestic violence or intimate partner violence. People stay at abusive jobs for an average of two years.

And our relationship with big tech is unquestionably an abusive one.

Is it really that bad?

Do I really need to read the Terms of Service? Do I really need that privacy? Do my children? Do I care if you use my images to train AI? I mean…kinda, yeah.

How could it NOT be abusive???

Do you remember, when we were kids, and our parents were warning us about all the dangers on the internet? Don’t tell people your name or age or location? We ignored them then. Now, it’s our kids warning us about all the dangers on the internet. We ignore them, too. What could they possibly know?

And while many of us have grown disillusioned with tech, we are still its biggest defenders. (NOT its biggest addicts—that isn’t the same thing at all.) We defend the IDEA of technology.

I am supremely guilty of this.

But you can appreciate the potential without falling for the abuse.

And we can all get far better at calling out that abuse.