“We are being lied to,” is the very first sentence in Marc Andreessen’s new “Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” where the billionaire venture capitalist lays out his latest thoughts on the benefits of technology and free markets. “We are told that technology takes our jobs, reduces our wages, increases inequality, threatens our health, ruins the environment, degrades our society, corrupts our children, impairs our humanity, threatens our future, and is ever on the verge of ruining everything.” But that’s just not so, he argues. Rather, we must get past our fear of “the myth of Prometheus”—and yes, Frankenstein, Oppenheimer, and the Terminator all apply.
The legendary venture capitalist’s 5,000-word manifesto discusses the impact that he sees technology having on the human species and touches on everything from utopias to the meaning of life. He argues that society is afraid of the “lies” it’s been told about new and ground-shaking technologies, with artificial intelligence just the latest of these. He strongly suggests that society is too concerned with an ancient Greek cautionary tale and not enough with Friedrich Nietzsche’s theory of modernity and the “Übermensch,” or superman.
