Mountainhead

I decided to watch the HBO movie so you don’t need to. It was made by the creators of “Succession”. This time it’s a story about the weekend getaway between 3 tech multi-billionaire friends & their near billionaire host while the world burns down around them due to the products they released. Yet ironically their wealth and net-worth continues to grow. Troddling around the world like giants. 

And like in “Succession”, you pretty much end up hating all the characters who are just awful people. Insecure, self-righteous, callous & surprising catty too. Maybe even with a lot of sociopathy & megalomania. Self serving for sure.  All plotting against each other.  Caricatures of what bored, rich douchebags with infinite resources would do. “I know everyone and I can do everything” is literally one of the lines. 

It’s just a movie but it seems to reflect all the animus that Hollywood and media seems to hold toward the tech industry, especially Silicon Valley elites. The movie's dialogue include well-used Silicon Valley terms like decel, first principles, disintermediation, decentralization, AI doomerism or transhumanism. Mockingly I might add. 

And I get it. I’ve been in Silicon Valley for a long time. It’s a literal bubble, filled with brilliant, ambitious and somewhat deluded people. People who think they can create something from nothing. The amount of wealth creation here is ridiculous. Unfortunately this rise has led to incredible insularity and a lack of understanding of the rest of the American populace. There is such a focus on technology and wealth that there is little thinking about the negative impacts across society of the tech being created. 

Add the arrogance from the incredible wealth and it seems to explain the anger and hatred that the rest of America and people from other industries feel. It started happening with mobile phones and social media. It’s only coming to the head with AI. No one wants to be disrupted. This disruption that is coming for white collar jobs will match the pain that globalization & outsourcing brought to manufacturing. 

No wonder most major AI Labs CEOs are not doing any public appearances anymore. They see the techlash coming as one of the billionaires says: “because really we are in a moment of tremendous creative destruction….A great turning…..nations are teetering and I think we play a role.”

Watching Mountainhead reminded me that unless we start going back to basics: doing good, building great products, not the gambling and Enshittification of products for a quick buck, we will probably deserve everything coming for us. Mobs with pitchforks. This movie is a not so subtle warning. “Winners take all, loser takes a fall.”