In other words…
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I swear I’ve read a Charlie Stross Laundry novel about that…
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I think you might be thinking of Iain M Banks Surface Detail (much of which takes place in a virtual ‘Hell’)
Dawg damn I miss that guy
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‘became a partner at Andreessen-Horowitz’
It always comes back to these guys doesn’t it?
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Every time I see a reference to that video I feel compelled to once again confirm that it is apparently a genuine marketing attempt rather than a satire or a parody created to make cryptobros look like fucking idiots. It’s just so hard to believe I feel like someone is going to reveal it was a big joke but years later no one has.
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Sounds more like South Central LA with crips and bloods than anything else. How does this individiual manage to tie their shoes in the morning?
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It’s worse than I remembered, too.
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As others have said, I’m sure he did. But much like Elon Musk’s thing with The Culture books, tech-bros have an amazing ability to take either nothing, or the exact wrong thing, away from fiction.
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Thiel keeps stealing from Lord of the Rings, and named his main company after networked crystal balls cursed to mislead or subvert the will of the user. (Burning Hands option now available!)
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Hey, the palantíri work great if you are Sauron.
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Not only does it sound like that, he deliberately invokes it:
“Reds should be welcomed there, and people should wear their tribal colors,” said Srinivasan, who compared his color-coded apartheid system to the Bloods vs. Crips gang rivalry. “No Blues should be welcomed there.”
While the Blues would be excluded, they would not be forgotten. Srinivasan imagines public screenings of anti-Blue propaganda films: “In addition to celebrating Gray and celebrating Red, you should have movies shown about Blue abuses.… There should be lots of stories about what Blues are doing that is bad.”
It’s not an accident, it’s by design. He fully intends to turn society into an all-out gangwar between his side, the Grays, Reds, and police, and the Blues, who would exist solely to be excluded and blamed for everything.
So along with all the other warnings he’s treating like instruction manuals, add the concept of a Two Minute Hate, and entire class of people designated as a collective Emmanuel Goldstein.
He has read all of the classics, and learned exactly the wrong lesson from all of them.
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I will never understand how techbros want to hitch their wagon to the party determined to drag us back to the 1950s, if not several centuries earlier. I guess nothing says “futuristic” like helping ensure the extinction of humanity as quickly as possible. Who needs a solarpunk utopia when you can triple down on fascism and capitalism and leave the planet a barren husk full of corpses, right?
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Because they’re so smart that they will always be the ones in authority. It’s not like the most vicious prevail under fascism. /s
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Did Ben Franklin ever start a cloud based service? No! The moron hung a key on his kite and went into a lightning storm.
That’s cloud adjacent!
Balaji then revealed his shocking ideas for a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe clad in gray t-shirts. “And if you see another Gray on the street … you do the nod,” he said…. “You’re a fellow Gray.”
So, like, a literal plot of dystopian sci-fi movie from the 80s.
“Reds should be welcomed there, and people should wear their tribal colors…” said Srinivasan… "No Blues should be welcomed there.
He’s not paying much attention. “Blues” are full of Neoliberals who are better free market capitalists than the MAGA Reds.
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Sounds like the same kind of libertarian/fascist dystopia crypto bros and other dickheads, who think being wealthy means they should get to do what they want, have been dreaming of for a while.
Some genius, it took him multiple degrees from Stanford to rehash well known ideas with a slight tech bro slant. Greys, Reds, and Blues…how creative /s
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Correction
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I suspect that he’s in full agreement with his pal Thiel on the “Competition is for losers” position.
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“A nod is easy to miss, perhaps the greeting should be clearer. Perhaps you should indicate the ideal height for a grown man? Which, of course, we all know to be 6 feet?”
