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.”
Esta historia es de la edición April 22 - 29, 2024 (Double Issue) de The New Yorker.
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Esta historia es de la edición April 22 - 29, 2024 (Double Issue) de The New Yorker.
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STUNTED
\"The Fall Guy.\"
MOTHERS OF US ALL
Paula Vogel's \"Mother Play,\" Shaina Taub's \"Suffs,\" and Amy Herzog's \"Mary Jane.\"
PURE PLEASURE
The \"Radical Optimism\" of Dua Lipa.
PARADISE LOST
The search for a home that never was in Claire Messud's new novel.
ORIGIN STORY
What do we hope to learn from our prehistory?
DEATH IN VENICE
At the Biennale, the past dignifies the weird, desperate present.
WE'RE NOT SO DIFFERENT, YOU AND I
\"You'll never get away with this!\" Ultra Man vowed as he wriggled in his chains. \"You may destroy me, but you'll never destroy what I stand for!\"
STONES OF CONTENTION
The British Museum faces accusations of cultural theft-and actual theft.
A CAMPUS IN CRISIS
Dissent and defiance at Columbia's pro-Palestine protests.
ARROW RETRIEVER
I am an arrow retriever. After a batrows are costly and time-consuming to make. It seems like a terrible waste-and maybe even a sin―for an arrow to fall to the ground without hitting someone. Even if the arrow kills somebody, it can be reused to kill someone else. As Randolf the Scot famously said, \"Arrows don't grow on trees.\"