People used to justify their actions as “God’s will.”

Today we have a new justification. It sounds more modern and more rational. I’m not sure it is.

In 2024, I recorded a short op-ed about a word we use every day and almost never examine. Its Greek roots point somewhere very different from where Silicon Valley has taken it, and that gap may matter more to #leadership than any model release this year.

Some of the questions I take on:

Why do smart people now say “I believe in technology” the way their grandparents talked about faith?

What did Philip K. Dick, Nassim Taleb, and Arthur C. Clarke each see coming?

Why is there still no app for happiness, and why would it be bad news if someone built one?

What happens the day the tool becomes the purpose?

Two years and countless #AI breakthroughs later, this piece has aged uncomfortably well, and it keeps pulling me back to #ethics and #philosophy rather than engineering.

Maybe I’m just a naive romantic. Listen and decide for yourself.

Get Your Why before AI: [ https://snglrty.co/4i4PyCV](https://snglrty.co/4i4PyCV)

Technology is the new religion, Silicon Valley the new Promised Land, and entrepreneurs the new prophets. They promise abundance/immortality and we’re all believers.