{"id":195009,"date":"2024-08-23T05:30:19","date_gmt":"2024-08-23T10:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/08\/techno-futurists-are-selling-an-interplanetary-paradise-for-the-posthuman-generation-they-just-forgot-about-the-rest-of-us"},"modified":"2024-08-23T05:30:19","modified_gmt":"2024-08-23T10:30:19","slug":"techno-futurists-are-selling-an-interplanetary-paradise-for-the-posthuman-generation-they-just-forgot-about-the-rest-of-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/08\/techno-futurists-are-selling-an-interplanetary-paradise-for-the-posthuman-generation-they-just-forgot-about-the-rest-of-us","title":{"rendered":"Techno-futurists are selling an interplanetary paradise for the posthuman generation\u2014they just forgot about the rest of us"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/techno-futurists-are-selling-an-interplanetary-paradise-for-the-posthuman-generation-they-just-forgot-about-the-rest-of-us2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Inside the cult of TESCREALism and the dangerous fantasies of Silicon Valley\u2019s self-appointed demigods, for Document\u2019s Spring\/Summer 2024 issue.<\/p>\n<p>As legend has it, Steve Jobs once asked Larry Kenyon, an engineer tasked with developing the Mac computer, to reduce its boot time by 10 seconds. Kenyon said that was impossible. \u201cWhat if it would save a person\u2019s life?\u201d Jobs asked. Then, he went to a whiteboard and laid out an equation: If 5 million users spent an additional 10 seconds waiting for the computer to start, the total hours wasted would be equivalent to 100 human lifetimes every year. Kenyon shaved 28 seconds off the boot time in a matter of weeks.<\/p>\n<p>Often cited as an example of the late CEO\u2019s \u201creality distortion field,\u201d this anecdote illustrates the combination of charisma, hyperbole, and marketing with which Jobs convinced his disciples to believe almost anything\u2014elevating himself to divine status and creating \u201ca cult of personality for capitalists,\u201d as Mark Cohen put it in an article about his death for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. In helping to push the myth of the genius tech founder into the cultural mainstream, Jobs laid the groundwork for future generations of Silicon Valley investors and entrepreneurs who have, amid the global decline of organized religion, become our secular messiahs. They preach from the mounts of Google and Meta, selling the public on digital technology\u2019s saving grace, its righteous ability to reshape the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Inside the cult of TESCREALism and the dangerous fantasies of Silicon Valley\u2019s self-appointed demigods, for Document\u2019s Spring\/Summer 2024 issue. As legend has it, Steve Jobs once asked Larry Kenyon, an engineer tasked with developing the Mac computer, to reduce its boot time by 10 seconds. Kenyon said that was impossible. \u201cWhat if it would save [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-information-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195009\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}