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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> key problem in both cases is imposing the requirement to be connected to the internet, after which it's game over

My point is we can do this for anything. Clocks enabled capitalists to exploit workers. Lights took the night from rebels. Steam engines took farmers out of the daylight and put them in mechanised factories. Hell, agriculture enabled modern civilisation but also created such a wave of oppression and anxiety we're still worshiping the gods we invented to save us from it.

None of those statements is wrong. But they're also incomplete.

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Clocks did not succeed because of their ability to exploit workers (they were way more useful on ships), nor lights because of rebels, but SV companies do succeed, spectacularly, once their utility for totalitarianism has been demonstrated. For example, the price of nVidia over time, the TikTok hysteria, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Palantir, Tesla, even Figma is like in a secondary market of helping to provide the veneer.

Conversely, if you are of no use to such a regime you will not get very far. The only meaningful question here is how organic this phenomenon is.

You're claiming nVidia, Facebook, Google and Tesla only started to become successful when they proved their value to totalitarians?

They wouldn't be behemoths if they were not.

nVidia - existed for years before most people noticed just what they were up to, and their change in valuation reflects that. For them AI was the point from the start, games was just the bootstrapping mechanism. Prior to the AI explosion they were a decent business but not a spectacular success.

Facebook - succeeded where almost every other social media app failed before by enabling data gathering and narrative control for the most important demographics in society (MySpace, for example, did not)

Google - a gov funded research project to organise and index information

Tesla - people dependent on the electrical grid are far easier to control than those dependent on gasoline.

For anyone doubting this, recall that OpenAI is already loosening it's "principles" with regard to the use of it's products for surveillance of innocent civilian populations that have not committed crimes, and yet who's behaviors are being monitored and recorded, and analyzed, not the least of which is Israel's current use which is open, naked oppression and targeting.

And despite the fact that OpenAI has incredibly low adoption everywhere outside of that, it is still worth tens of billions of dollars. Do you really think that valuation comes from being able to remove people from fuckin cellphone pictures with a tap, or generating royalty free images?

> Google - a gov funded research project to organise and index information

> Tesla - people dependent on the electrical grid are far easier to control than those dependent on gasoline.

I'm sorry, your tinfoil hat is slipping.

https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-ci...

That's Google.

I live in Quebec where the gov electricity monopoly (Hydro Quebec) now insist that new homes have smart meters in, where they can remotely control your thermostat, while simultaneously campaigning to make all alternatives illegal. Curiously we're also a big Tesla market because of the cheap electricity, which is also the reason for the thermostats: they want to turn the heating down in Quebec so they can sell the same electricity for more south of the border.

> Tesla - people dependent on the electrical grid are far easier to control than those dependent on gasoline.

Where do you think gasoline comes from exactly? I can rechange an electric car completely off grid with solar/wind. I'm still working on my off-grid oil drilling and refinery operation.

Unless there is a revolution in batteries (which we all hope there is) you won't be able to store or transport electricity with anything like the ease you can gasoline.

If you try charging a car from a solar panel you aren't going to be going very far in a hurry.

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