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Comment by chiefalchemist | Hacker News Reader

> "Web protocols, smartphones, personal computers, encryption etc., all of this came from the military into Silicon Valley"

Yes. That's factually correct. But at what cost? How many wars? How many lives lost due to our infatuation with the MIC?

The Pentagon does not have to be the only road to basic research, R&D, etc. What if there were other agencies with the budget (to burn) clout of the DoD?

Put another way:

What might the societal perks have been if the deep pockets' lens was not military-centric?

For example, is there an alt-earth in an alt-universe with no mobile phones, but also no poverty?

The things you've mentioned are nice. They certainly are shiny. But just because we made them doesn't mean we should have.

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> But at what cost? How many wars? How many lives lost due to our infatuation with the MIC?

I'm not implying the military industrial complex is good (or bad). I'm simply saying the narrative that silicon valley gave the military smart phones and not vice versa severely misunderstands the way things in that sector happen. To the extent that Silicon Valley works with the military it is because SV effectively is a branch of the military.

> The Pentagon does not have to be the only road to basic research, R&D, etc. What if there were other agencies with the budget (to burn) clout of the DoD?

Is there really a huge difference between Pentagon and DoD when talking about the MID?

> To the extent that Silicon Valley works with the military it is because SV effectively is a branch of the military

This is glossing over an incredible amount of history. Is the entire physics field a branch of the military as well?

A lot of it, yeah. Look at the physics and funding that came out of the bomb.

>For example, is there an alt-earth in an alt-universe with no mobile phones, but also no poverty?

Probably not. A society with no poverty would be so much more productive than ours that it would invent fun things like mobile phones pretty quickly.

Perhaps you're right.

Mine was a hypothetical about priorities, as well as some social commentary. That is, the more we look down at our shiny objects and drool, the less likely we are to see how a handheld mobile device is relatively low hanging fruit.

Perhaps just correlation / coincidence but adoption of modern technology tracks well with the loss of the middle class, at least in the USA. Yes, a stretch. I'm not going to the mat for this idea. Just a simple observation; worth pondering?

I agree with you, but in the end, I think that pitting an imagined austere but socially developed society against our actual supposedly-profligate but socially underdeveloped society misses reality to repeat a myth: the myth of decadence. This myth lets people pretend society is too productive and too good at meeting needs, leaving nothing but petty status disputes, covering up the reality of a society that's running dramatically below peak efficiency precisely because it doggedly dedicates so much of its resource base to status disputes.

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