Silicon Valley really is the last holdout of modernism. There's already a general sense that they love to dredge up century-old, largely discredited concepts (they also revived the term "rationalism" from people like Bertrand Russell, but use it now to justify scamming people with crypto).
But I had no idea about this weirdly forgotten movement. Great historical essay, as always!
Great essay. Though I've read Ellul's book, I'd never heard of the 1920s-30s technocracy movement before. Where did you find Adair's book? It is not available for sale online!
The scary part is, as usual, the general voting public has no idea what AI is or where it is going. So how does democracy control a system its participants can't understand? Isn't that the age old flaw of democracy?
But who wants to live in a world of no EQ technocrats who think machines, even general intelligence machines, can make all the decisions. And this wonderful technology hallucinates. (maybe it is more like us then we give it credit for!). So how useful is it? As a tool in the hands of a scientist helping him or her to map genes it has great utility. But if it makes up sources what good is it in helping produce results?
But the fear of harm is real because a machine that has no soul will look at human beings as a imperfect scourge to be either controlled or eliminated. We humans,as imperfect as we are, have that as yet undefinable amalgamation of rational and emotional thought.
This is a great article because it articulates for me my fear in a way I could not. As a democratic society we are being quietly and surreptitiously manipulated by the unseen hand that we surrender to every time we pick up our phones.
I'd recommend looking into the Saint-Simonian movement, in a way they were the original Technocrats but in 19th century France. They were a sinister bunch, they basically advocated a kind of theocracy of science.
> Today, this is more or less a mainstream view of venture capitalists and leaders in tech—from Marc Andreessen to Balaji Srinivasan to Peter Thiel—who take a millenarian view of technology.
You're glossing over a key difference:
Howard Scott wanted a unified world spanning Technate, whereas Balaji envisions a bunch of independent city states.
In fact today it is the anti-technologists and AI-doomers who are being forced by the logic of their position to seek a world spanning surveillance state. After all if new technology is the danger, and anyone could potentially create said technology in his garage, only a world spanning surveillance state can stop it.
I think there is some truth in what you're saying, but there are two camps.
Srinivasan represents one branch that wishes to exit democracy by creating a parallel sphere that exists outside the traditional state. This is very similar to the tax haven system that developed post-WW2, but infused with some internet/tech ethos. The idea is that this sphere would eventually grow powerful enough to exert influence on traditional states. I think it still has some globalist aspirations, although it's decentralized.
But there's another branch led by Palantir and other tech companies like it. They explicitly want to merge with the American state for surveillance, defense, and other logistics. This is stated plainly in Alex Karp's book "The Technological Republic." Personally, I think this side is winning now. Srinivasan's dream is just to placate tech elites with some "anti-establishment" philosophy as they cozy up to the state in actuality.
As for this last point you mentioned:
>After all if new technology is the danger, and anyone could potentially create said technology in his garage, only a world spanning surveillance state can stop it.
I don't think we're in that "tech can be made in your garage" phase anymore, which was very 1980s/90s. So I really doubt surveillance systems are used to prevent emerging, competitive technologies. After all, the energy demands of current tech companies are practically impossible to meet without record investment. Tech is a highly guarded sector now. I'd say the only determining factor today for the tech world is capital and protecting their monopoly once established. This is openly stated by Peter Thiel (who views monopolies positively as more efficient) and his protege Sam Altman (whose time at Y Combinator made him understand tech as linked to capital).
This was true in the days when "tech" meant social networks with their network effects, it's much less true with AI (see hugging face) or drones, and certainly not with crypto.
The money definitely trickles down to smaller firms (never heard of Hugging Face), but the massive talent buyouts now by Meta and others tell me this is mainly a game for the Big 5 and OpenAI - at least when it comes to accelerating development
Drones, I'm not super familiar with. They can be made for cheap, but unclear how useful those will be militarily. That's Palmer Luckey's bet now, and he certainly had tons of capital (sold Oculus for $2B)
As for crypto, that's sort of a different conversation (relatively low barrier to entry, but extremely high failure rate)
> Haven't been paying attention to the Ukraine war, I see.
I have been, but that seems really situational to that battlefield (like the fiber optic drone). Really cheap to make though, that's true. But those are all extensions of the military though whereas we were talking about civilians producing "tech innovations" and then being surveilled. There was that fear with 3D printed guns for a minute, but that ended up being overblown
They're all so moronic that they can't deliver on the dystopian shit that they wanted to use on us. Genetic editing doesn't work, neither this garbage Musk promotes.
While Howard Scott was putting together his ideology, Robert Moses was consolidating power and living it out. His rule over New York City infrastructure was a testament to how Scott's desired "rule by genius experts" tends to go in practice. Moses was the epitome of a genius technocrat, and his rule was nearly absolute at the peak of his power. And yet, by the end of his career, his reputation was in tatters due to all the bad decisions he made and the arrogance with which he made them. For every Lee Kuan Yew in history, there are half a dozen Robert Moseses.
Ah, technology will save us. Except it's just another case of some self-appointed philosopher-kings figuring out how they're going to manipulate the peasantry. History repeats itself.
Silicon Valley really is the last holdout of modernism. There's already a general sense that they love to dredge up century-old, largely discredited concepts (they also revived the term "rationalism" from people like Bertrand Russell, but use it now to justify scamming people with crypto).
But I had no idea about this weirdly forgotten movement. Great historical essay, as always!
Great essay. Though I've read Ellul's book, I'd never heard of the 1920s-30s technocracy movement before. Where did you find Adair's book? It is not available for sale online!
Thanks, and yeah, the movement has been buried and forgotten. I was surprised to read about it too.
I actually found that book on Scribd somehow! Somebody uploaded it.
Link: https://www.scribd.com/document/661881817/Adair-The-Technocrats-1919-1967?doc_id=661881817&order=673573459
There are also two other books that seem super interesting, I have been meaning to pick them up at the library:
- "Technology and the American Dream: The Technocrat Movement, 1900-1941" by
William E. Akin (1977)
- "Messianic Scientism: Technocracy, 1919-1960" by Henry Elsner (1962)
Thanks for the link and the additional titles!
There was an episode of Ideas on CBC a little while back about the movement which is worth checking out:
https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/audio/1.6082914
Oh cool, thanks for the share. I had no idea!
The scary part is, as usual, the general voting public has no idea what AI is or where it is going. So how does democracy control a system its participants can't understand? Isn't that the age old flaw of democracy?
But who wants to live in a world of no EQ technocrats who think machines, even general intelligence machines, can make all the decisions. And this wonderful technology hallucinates. (maybe it is more like us then we give it credit for!). So how useful is it? As a tool in the hands of a scientist helping him or her to map genes it has great utility. But if it makes up sources what good is it in helping produce results?
But the fear of harm is real because a machine that has no soul will look at human beings as a imperfect scourge to be either controlled or eliminated. We humans,as imperfect as we are, have that as yet undefinable amalgamation of rational and emotional thought.
This is a great article because it articulates for me my fear in a way I could not. As a democratic society we are being quietly and surreptitiously manipulated by the unseen hand that we surrender to every time we pick up our phones.
I'd recommend looking into the Saint-Simonian movement, in a way they were the original Technocrats but in 19th century France. They were a sinister bunch, they basically advocated a kind of theocracy of science.
I got some exposure to him when I read "To the Finland Station" (which I highly recommend). He's very interesting, might be the first "technocrat"
> Today, this is more or less a mainstream view of venture capitalists and leaders in tech—from Marc Andreessen to Balaji Srinivasan to Peter Thiel—who take a millenarian view of technology.
You're glossing over a key difference:
Howard Scott wanted a unified world spanning Technate, whereas Balaji envisions a bunch of independent city states.
In fact today it is the anti-technologists and AI-doomers who are being forced by the logic of their position to seek a world spanning surveillance state. After all if new technology is the danger, and anyone could potentially create said technology in his garage, only a world spanning surveillance state can stop it.
I think there is some truth in what you're saying, but there are two camps.
Srinivasan represents one branch that wishes to exit democracy by creating a parallel sphere that exists outside the traditional state. This is very similar to the tax haven system that developed post-WW2, but infused with some internet/tech ethos. The idea is that this sphere would eventually grow powerful enough to exert influence on traditional states. I think it still has some globalist aspirations, although it's decentralized.
But there's another branch led by Palantir and other tech companies like it. They explicitly want to merge with the American state for surveillance, defense, and other logistics. This is stated plainly in Alex Karp's book "The Technological Republic." Personally, I think this side is winning now. Srinivasan's dream is just to placate tech elites with some "anti-establishment" philosophy as they cozy up to the state in actuality.
As for this last point you mentioned:
>After all if new technology is the danger, and anyone could potentially create said technology in his garage, only a world spanning surveillance state can stop it.
I don't think we're in that "tech can be made in your garage" phase anymore, which was very 1980s/90s. So I really doubt surveillance systems are used to prevent emerging, competitive technologies. After all, the energy demands of current tech companies are practically impossible to meet without record investment. Tech is a highly guarded sector now. I'd say the only determining factor today for the tech world is capital and protecting their monopoly once established. This is openly stated by Peter Thiel (who views monopolies positively as more efficient) and his protege Sam Altman (whose time at Y Combinator made him understand tech as linked to capital).
> Tech is a highly guarded sector now.
This was true in the days when "tech" meant social networks with their network effects, it's much less true with AI (see hugging face) or drones, and certainly not with crypto.
The money definitely trickles down to smaller firms (never heard of Hugging Face), but the massive talent buyouts now by Meta and others tell me this is mainly a game for the Big 5 and OpenAI - at least when it comes to accelerating development
Drones, I'm not super familiar with. They can be made for cheap, but unclear how useful those will be militarily. That's Palmer Luckey's bet now, and he certainly had tons of capital (sold Oculus for $2B)
As for crypto, that's sort of a different conversation (relatively low barrier to entry, but extremely high failure rate)
> never heard of Hugging Face
They publish open soucre and open weight models. Much to the annoyance of the anti-AI people.
> Drones, I'm not super familiar with. They can be made for cheap, but unclear how useful those will be militarily.
Haven't been paying attention to the Ukraine war, I see.
I'll have to check that out then, thanks.
> Haven't been paying attention to the Ukraine war, I see.
I have been, but that seems really situational to that battlefield (like the fiber optic drone). Really cheap to make though, that's true. But those are all extensions of the military though whereas we were talking about civilians producing "tech innovations" and then being surveilled. There was that fear with 3D printed guns for a minute, but that ended up being overblown
They're all so moronic that they can't deliver on the dystopian shit that they wanted to use on us. Genetic editing doesn't work, neither this garbage Musk promotes.
https://posthumousstyle.substack.com/p/neuralink-does-not-read-minds-and
They're morons because they obsess over details but cannot piece together the big picture.
https://robc137.substack.com/p/left-brain-vs-whole-brain-in-battlestar
While Howard Scott was putting together his ideology, Robert Moses was consolidating power and living it out. His rule over New York City infrastructure was a testament to how Scott's desired "rule by genius experts" tends to go in practice. Moses was the epitome of a genius technocrat, and his rule was nearly absolute at the peak of his power. And yet, by the end of his career, his reputation was in tatters due to all the bad decisions he made and the arrogance with which he made them. For every Lee Kuan Yew in history, there are half a dozen Robert Moseses.
https://open.substack.com/pub/treemason/p/independent-technocrat-committeeright?r=2wv5d&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Such an amazing, informative, detailed essay
Ah, technology will save us. Except it's just another case of some self-appointed philosopher-kings figuring out how they're going to manipulate the peasantry. History repeats itself.