Thread by @PnictogenHorses

one of the most bizarre aspects from the 1990s #technology / #Internet boom was how it somehow managed to convince a whole lot of optimistic and uncritical people in media (and business) that humanity had somehow entered a "post-industrial" age.

(cont'd)

computers and electronic devices are *manufactured items*, requiring a massive industrial base in order to function—and yet somehow it was easy for gullible editorialists and entrepreneurial grifters to talk as though the digital world had somehow *replaced* all that.

(cont'd)

the #programming nerd and #STEM-lord culture that arose seemed especially eager to believe that they'd miraculously done away with the need for mining and factories and skilled industrial labor, merely because they had @arduino and #3Dprinting to play with now.

(cont'd)

the 1990s culture of ungrounded technological optimism has, of course, only gotten worse with time. scientifically and culturally illiterate geekbros like @sama and @VitalikButerin now pollute Western #technology as a direct result of nonsensical "post-industrial" talk.

(cont'd)

computers, these folks think, can simply do *anything*. @sama &c. inhabit an fantastical world of abstractions cut off from material reality‚ because the abstractions of #programming do not need to line up with physical reality. you can *imagine* anything—on a computer.

(cont'd)

and consequently if some simulation of a thing can be made to exist on a computer, the @sama / @VitalikButerin / @elonmusk crowd feel as though its *material* existence is a mere matter of course. they think of rendering images on a computer as "building" actual things.

(cont'd)

if the rendered images show a @SpaceX Martian colony—why, that proves that we'll be living on Mars any day now! after all @elonmusk is a genius, he can do anything! @mtaibbi says so—at least, he used to. (he maybe be keeping some distance, these days.)

~Mona Drafter of Pnictogen