A little more than a decade ago, Founders Fund, a venture capital firm run by the entrepreneur, investor, and political gadfly Peter Thiel, issued a proclamation called “What Happened to the Future?” As an investment thesis, it was underwhelming—it advanced biotechnology, energy, and the Internet as smart bets—but it was received as something of a spiritual treatise. Thiel was best known for his early investment in Facebook, but he believed that the nation had become sluggish. We might have been attempting to terraform nearby planets or surmount death. Instead, we made apps. His statement belonged to the genre of the writer F. T. Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto of 1909, which proposed that Italy’s moribund museum culture be razed in favor of a machine cult of speed and steel: “We are going to be present at the birth of the centaur and we shall soon see the first angels fly! We must break down the gates oflife to test the bolts and the padlocks! Let us go! Here is the very first sunrise on earth!” Thiel, no poet, was punchier: “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.”
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der April 22 - 29, 2024 (Double Issue)-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der April 22 - 29, 2024 (Double Issue)-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
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Consolation
Five years before my mother died, we had a violent argument—a thing that had never happened before.
THE INSTIGATOR
How Miranda July starts again.
A CRITIC AT LARGE - OFF THE LEASH
The wacky and wonderful world of the Westminster Dog Show.
LOADED
We used to think the rich had a social function. What are they good for now?
BLAME GAME
“Baby Reindeer” and Under the Bridge.”
OUT OF THE DARKNESS
Zemlinsky, Schulhoff; and other neglected Jewish composers of Central Europe.
BOOKS - FORGET IT
A neuropsychologist says that we're thinking about memory all wrong.
A REPORTER AT LARGE - CONVICTION
Lucy Letby, the most notorious nurse in Britain, was found guilty of killing seven babies. Did she do it?
PERSONAL HISTORY - TABULA RASA
THE WORDLE PHILOSOPHY
NEIGHBORLY
My name is Margaret Jo Stinson, and I’d like to share my own perspective on this sort of thing.