I recently re-read the Breaking Smart series by Venkatesh Rao. Below are some of my favorite excerpts.
On the increased impact young people can have:
“But the economic numbers only hint at the profundity of the resulting societal impact. As a simple example, a 14-year-old teenager today (too young to show up in labor statistics) can learn programming, contribute significantly to open-source projects, and become a talented professional-grade programmer before age 18.”
“Software eating the world is a story of the seen and the unseen: small, measurable effects that seem underwhelming or even negative, and large invisible and positive effects that are easy to miss, unless you know where to look.”
“To traditionalists, particularly in the United States, the car is a motif for an entire way of life, and the smartphone just an accessory. To early adopters who have integrated ridesharing deeply into their lives, the smartphone is the lifestyle motif, and the car is the accessory.”
“Partly as a consequence of how rarely soft, world-eating technologies erupt into human life, we have been systematically underestimating the magnitude of the forces being unleashed by software. While it might seem like software is constantly in the news, what we have already seen is dwarfed by what still remains unseen.”
On the very visible negatives of technological change and the long-term disguised benefits:
“These three reasons for under-estimating the power of software had counterparts in previous technology revolutions. The railroad revolution of the nineteenth century also saw a transitional period marked by systematically flawed expectations, a bloody civil war in the United States, and extensive patterns of disguised change — such as the rise of urban living, grocery store chains, and meat consumption — whose root cause was cheap rail transport.”
“But unlike most periods in history, young people today do not have to either “wait their turn” or directly confront a social order that is systematically stacked against them. Operating in the margins by a hacker ethos — a problem solving sensibility based on rapid trial-and-error and creative improvisation — they are able to use software leverage and loose digital forms of organization to create new economic, social and political wealth. In the process, young people are indirectly disrupting politics and economics and creating a new parallel social order. Instead of vying for control of venerable institutions that have already weathered several generational wars, young people are creating new institutions based on the new software and new wealth. These improvised but highly effective institutions repeatedly emerge out of nowhere, and begin accumulating political and economic power.”
“But many who are young still choose the apparent safety of the credentialist scripts of their parents. These are what David Brooks called Organization Kids (after William Whyte’s 1956 classic, The Organization Man): those who bet (or allow their “Tiger” parents to bet on their behalf) on the industrial social order. If you are an adult over 30, especially one encumbered with significant family obligations or debt, the decision is harder.”
“Those with a Promethean mindset and an aggressive approach to pursuing a new path can break out of the credentialist life script at any age. Those who are unwilling or unable to do so are holding on to it more tenaciously than ever.”
“In short, authoritarian high modernism is a kind of tunnel vision. Architects are prone to it in environments that are richer than one mind can comprehend. The urge to dictate and organize is destructive, because it leads architects to destroy the apparent chaos that is vital for success.”
“As a result of pragmatism prevailing, a nearly ungovernable Promethean fire has been unleashed. Hundreds of thousands of software entrepreneurs are unleashing innovations on an unsuspecting world by the power vested in them by “nobody in particular,” and by any economic means necessary.”
I love the line “by the power vested in them by “nobody in particular” we live in a world where the only person with the power to stop us from learning and doing what is ourselves.
“Software possesses an extremely strange property: it is possible to create high-value software products with effectively zero capital outlay. As Mozilla engineer Sam Penrose put it, software programming is labor that creates capital.”
“Devoting skills and resources to playful tinkering still seems “wrong,” when there are obvious and serious problems desperately waiting for skilled attention. Like the protagonist in the movie Brewster’s Millions, who struggles to spend $30 million within thirty days in order to inherit $300 million, software engineers must unlearn habits born of scarcity before they can be productive in their medium.”
“In software, waterfall processes fail in predictable ways, like classic Greek tragedies. Agile processes on the other hand, can lead to snowballing serendipity, getting luckier and luckier, and succeeding in unexpected ways. The reason is simple: waterfall plans constrain the freedom of future participants, leading them to resent and rebel against the grand plan in predictable ways. By contrast, agile models empower future participants in a project, catalyzing creativity and unpredictable new value.”
“As in economics, a project with high technical debt is in a fragile state and vulnerable to zemblanity. A project with high technical surplus is in an antifragile state and open to serendipity.”
“Prometheanism is the philosophy of technology that follows from the idea that humans can, do and should change. Pastoralism, on the other hand is the philosophy that change is profane. The tension between these two philosophies leads to a technology diffusion process characterized by a colloquial phrase popular in the startup world: first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
“Just as pragmatic and purist development models lead to serendipity and zemblanity in engineering respectively, Promethean and pastoral models lead to serendipity and zemblanity at the level of entire societies.”
“Because they serve as stewards of dominant pastoral visions, cultural elites are most prone to viewing unexpected developments as degeneracy. From the Greek philosopher Plato (who lamented the invention of writing in the 4th century BC) to the Chinese scholar, Zhang Xian Wu (who lamented the invention of printing in the 12th century AD), alarmist commentary on technological change has been a constant in history.”
“An unqualified appeal to “universal” human values is usually a call for an authoritarian imposition of decidedly non-universal values.”
“Innovation can in fact be defined as ongoing moral progress achieved by driving directly towards the regimes of greatest moral ambiguity, where our collective demons lurk. These are also the regimes where technology finds its maximal expressions, and it is no accident that the two coincide. Genuine progress feels like onrushing obscenity and profanity, and also requires new technological capabilities to drive it.”
“Today, our collective rear-view mirror is packed with seeming profanity, in the form of multiple paths of descent into hell. Among the major ones that occupy our minds are the following: Technological Unemployment: The debate around technological unemployment and the concern that “this time it is different” with AI and robots “eating all the jobs.” Inequality: The rising concern around persistent inequality and the fear that software, unlike previous technologies, does not offer much opportunity outside of an emerging intellectual elite of programmers and financiers. “Real” Problems: The idea that “real” problems such as climate change, collapsing biodiversity, healthcare, water scarcity and energy security are being neglected, while talent and energy are being frivolously expended on “trivial” photo-sharing apps. “Real” Innovation: The idea that “real” innovation in areas such as space exploration, flying cars and jetpacks has stagnated. National Competitiveness: The idea that software eating the world threatens national competitiveness based on manufacturing prowess and student performance on standardized tests. Cultural Decline: The idea that social networks, and seemingly “low-quality” new media and online education are destroying intellectual culture. Cybersecurity: The concern that vast new powers of repression are being gained by authoritarian forces, threatening freedom everywhere: Surveillance and cyberwarfare technologies (the latter ranging from worms like Stuxnet created by intelligence agencies, to drone strikes) beyond the reach of average citizens. The End of the Internet: The concern that new developments due to commercial interests pose a deep and existential threat to the freedoms and possibilities that we have come to associate with the Internet.”
“This is the second major subplot in our Tale of Two Computers. Wherever bits begin to dominate atoms, we solve problems differently. Instead of defining and pursuing goals we create and exploit luck.”
“The networked world approach is based on a very different idea. It does not begin with utopian goals or resources captured through specific promises or threats. Instead it begins with open-ended, pragmatic tinkering that thrives on the unexpected. The process is not even recognizable as a problem-solving mechanism at first glance: Immersion in relevant streams of ideas, people and free capabilities Experimentation to uncover new possibilities through trial and error Leverage to double down on whatever works unexpectedly well”
“A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system.”
“If the three most desirable things in a world defined by organizations are location, location and location, in the networked world they are connections, connections and connections.”
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