What Tech calls Thinking

Table of Contents

What tech calls thinking

By Adrian Daub published 2020

Quotations and notes

  1. she was expecting the world to make Theranos’s fictional tech real.‘she repeated a Jobs-ism (an infamous free-floating quote, variants of which have been ascribed to everyone from Mahatma Gandhi to Arthur Schopenhauer): ’

—Adrian Daub, “What Tech Calls Thinking: An Inquiry Into the Intellectual Bedrock of Silicon Valley”, p. 130

  1. Tech hasn’t so much changed the rules as it has captured the norms by which the field is governed.
  2. Ray Kurzweil - a futurist and accelarationist - see 21
  3. Nick Land - A futurist
  4. so-called Dark Enlightenment— Dark Enlightenment refers to a controversial political and philosophical movement that emerged in the early 21st century, primarily through the writings of Curtis Yarvin (known by the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug). It represents a rejection of liberal democracy and modern progressive ideals, advocating instead for a return to more authoritarian, hierarchical systems of governance.
  5. “forgetfulness is a property of all action.”
  6. ‘Silicon Valley founders, inventors, and moneymen routinely embrace the first-person plural when they’re really talking about themselves—although they will frame it in such a way that you cannot quite tell whether they are using the royal “we” or imagine a phantom team around them at all times. ’

—Adrian Daub, “What Tech Calls Thinking: An Inquiry Into the Intellectual Bedrock of Silicon Valley”, p. 140

  1. If these motivational quotes spin a salvation narrative, it is one of individual salvation.
  2. the window of self-transcendence closes pretty much when we leave high school.
  3. bromides
  4. it has done so as part of a self-help ethos.
  5. the focus is usually on the creative self:
  6. It could uncharitably be described as an unempathetic person’s idea of empathy.
  7. specifically, a lot of its central operations are borrowed from cognitive behavioral therapy….‘There is a pronounced stoicism to it, but also a very American work ethic: with a can-do spirit, you can make the necessary adjustments to your perception of yourself and your environment. ’

—Adrian Daub, “What Tech Calls Thinking: An Inquiry Into the Intellectual Bedrock of Silicon Valley”, p. 144

  1. in design thinking, self-improvement and programming become one.
  2. ‘n the 1970s, several of Gregory Bateson’s students pioneered the field of neuro-linguistic programming. Associated above all with Richard Bandler and John Grinder, neuro-linguistic programming remains influential today, even though it is widely regarded as a pseudoscience.’

—Adrian Daub, “What Tech Calls Thinking: An Inquiry Into the Intellectual Bedrock of Silicon Valley”, p. 144.

  1. or, as critics would have it, self-help platitudes.
  2. failure is always assumed to be temporary;
  3. ‘ “I learned a lot” is what whoever is hiring, seeding, funding, or advising you on your next undertaking is going to want to hear. “The bastards screwed me out of a bunch of money” isn’t.’

—Adrian Daub, “What Tech Calls Thinking: An Inquiry Into the Intellectual Bedrock of Silicon Valley”, p. 148

  1. fetishizing of narratives of failure
  2. Accelerationism advocates a surrender to the forces of acceleration instead, jumping into the river even as we can hear the roar of the waterfall.’

Adrian Daub, “What Tech Calls Thinking: An Inquiry Into the Intellectual Bedrock of Silicon Valley”, p. 125

Back to Index