alt.hn

7/25/2026 at 6:22:15 PM

Silicon Valley has a science fiction problem

 https://aeon.co/essays/silicon-valley-has-a-science-fiction-problem

by bookofjoe

7/25/2026 at 7:52:53 PM

I think at some point you have to accept that different people are going to take away different things from the same novel.

by Bratmon

7/25/2026 at 8:47:51 PM

Quite funny given that the people in question here tend to be directly opposed to postmodernist views like this one.

by estearum

7/25/2026 at 9:39:45 PM

Sure. And while some of those are genuine different views others show lack of understanding or that the person in question forgot most of the content. It is in fact ppssible to genuinely not understand or genuinely forget things.

Or, at worst, that they are genuine psychopath looking forward harm they will cause.

by watwut

7/25/2026 at 9:10:08 PM

I’m cross with Musk for using Culture ship names while DOGEing. Take your stinking paws off my utopia, you damned dirty trillionaire!

by Kaibeezy

7/26/2026 at 12:41:03 AM

I take a little solace in the certainty he didn’t comprehend those books very much at all considering how fluid human sexuality is in the series - although it’s possible he somehow sympathized with one of the AI factions instead of the human characters.

by stevenwoo

7/25/2026 at 10:17:47 PM

We are pleased to announce that we have two billion users of our platform The Torment Nexus as inspired by the hit scifi book "please do not create the torment nexus"

The other fiction people have derived a problem from is Game of Thrones. Its brand of "might is right" political realism in the context of warring kingdoms was narratively interesting but a poor choice for the voting public to start relating to.

by captainbland

7/25/2026 at 11:30:56 PM

14 years ago I gave a keynote at a large German developer conference using Sci-Fi to explain the shift in system architectures at the time.

I still think explaining Spanner using Spaceballs and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was funny but yeah, I had hoped it wouldn't be Minority Report and Blade Runner winning.

by janpeuker

7/25/2026 at 8:42:25 PM

Reality increasingly has a science fiction problem too. Drone warfare and the HuggingFace attack come to mind.

by skybrian

7/25/2026 at 9:03:16 PM

A new adaptation of Ghost in the Shell just dropped, and not a moment too soon as society deals with AI hacking people's brains, making them confuse what's real and what isn't...

by bitwize

7/25/2026 at 9:43:49 PM

And apparently also much more explicit depictions of Kusanagi Motoko having lesbian cyborg sex than in any previous anime adaptation.

by JuniperMesos

7/25/2026 at 9:59:57 PM

Well, it's a more faithful adaptation of the manga, and hence has a lot more of the humor, sexiness, and overall humanness from Shirow's original work. Not that Mamoru Oshii's more cerebral 1995 adaptation doesn't have merits of its own.

by bitwize

7/25/2026 at 7:26:03 PM

http://archive.today/G4V7M

Vercel says no to my browser, so...

by bravetraveler

7/26/2026 at 2:07:32 AM

same here. then archive.ph sends me to google for captcha. sigh.

by m463

7/25/2026 at 11:10:37 PM

This is not specific to Silicon Valley. It's human nature.

People take the "vibe" from a work and assume the vibe is the meaning. Look at how things like Fight Club, The Punisher, and Wall Street are viewed in the general culture.

The Great Gatsby is a famous cautionary tale of the danger and pointlessness of unchecked pursuit of wealth. It's studied widely in US high schools. When the movie came out, all over the US people held "Gatsby Parties" which were 1920s themed parties focuses on ostentatious displaces of wealth.

No matter how profound and important the message, most people won't look beyond the vibe.

by timoth3y

7/25/2026 at 8:09:54 PM

“ Gene Roddenberry’s Federation was built on principles of equality and exploration for the sake of knowledge, not profit or military dominance”

You should actually watch Star Trek.

by melling