Marc Andreessen continues to sound just like himself. I think this is good for the piece, it feels very genuine. In the main I agree.
Markets is the biggest section. This feels telling and also kind of wasteful. It also had the clunkiest bits which were, but of course, the ones about economics. By contrast the Technology section felt a bit thin, but I could easily forgive a certain amount of c’mon, you know why you are here in the effort.
What is this for, really? I can tell who it is for, because it doesn’t seem like it would register much with people who didn’t already mostly agree. But what problem is the manifesto solving? Guessing by some of the keywords included in the bad ideas list, this feels like maybe trying to further crystallize e/acc into a broader concern?
On the flip side, this bit here under The Enemy makes it seem more like talking book:
Our present society has been subjected to a mass demoralization campaign for six decades – against technology and against life – under varying names like “existential risk”, “sustainability”, “ESG”, “Sustainable Development Goals”, “social responsibility”, “stakeholder capitalism”, “Precautionary Principle”, “trust and safety”, “tech ethics”, “risk management”, “de-growth”, “the limits of growth”.
Purely as a matter of style, I thought the “we believe” and “we had a problem” chunks were great, that’s what I want out of a manifesto. I would jettison all the quotes and argumentation, moving names and sources to footnotes or something; I mostly found it distracting, like he was so used to the argumentation side of things he had trouble letting it go (Not that I blame him, I would have the same issue were I to write a manifesto). I thought some of them were compacted too much, like compressing all the progress in agriculture into the green revolution, which sort of deprived it of emotional impact (not least because of term confusion, since green revolution shows up in advertising campaigns and slogans constantly meaning something entirely different).
All that said, I liked it and I wish more public figures like Marc would do things like this.
Comments in no particular order:
Marc Andreessen continues to sound just like himself. I think this is good for the piece, it feels very genuine. In the main I agree.
Markets is the biggest section. This feels telling and also kind of wasteful. It also had the clunkiest bits which were, but of course, the ones about economics. By contrast the Technology section felt a bit thin, but I could easily forgive a certain amount of c’mon, you know why you are here in the effort.
What is this for, really? I can tell who it is for, because it doesn’t seem like it would register much with people who didn’t already mostly agree. But what problem is the manifesto solving? Guessing by some of the keywords included in the bad ideas list, this feels like maybe trying to further crystallize e/acc into a broader concern?
On the flip side, this bit here under The Enemy makes it seem more like talking book:
Purely as a matter of style, I thought the “we believe” and “we had a problem” chunks were great, that’s what I want out of a manifesto. I would jettison all the quotes and argumentation, moving names and sources to footnotes or something; I mostly found it distracting, like he was so used to the argumentation side of things he had trouble letting it go (Not that I blame him, I would have the same issue were I to write a manifesto). I thought some of them were compacted too much, like compressing all the progress in agriculture into the green revolution, which sort of deprived it of emotional impact (not least because of term confusion, since green revolution shows up in advertising campaigns and slogans constantly meaning something entirely different).
All that said, I liked it and I wish more public figures like Marc would do things like this.