the nerds in the machine

26 Mar, 2025

Today I mentioned 'the machine' in another post, broadly encompassing the biggest, most powerful tech companies, and I want to explore that further separately.

The way they operate reminds me of a huge field harvester - unrelenting, imposing, extracting, and causing destruction where they go. Someone standing in their way would be shredded. When they’re done, you get the impression that nothing else is left. You now have to go to their barn or their supermarket to get what you could have harvested yourself.

I also have to think of the Reapers in Mass Effect - huge machines who return in a cycle to harvest what the emerging alien civilizations have built. Here, there are cycles in which people build just so the big players can suck it up within them. To me, the first cycle was when social media consolidated all kinds of different websites, groups and forums into itself, later hiding it behind walls. The next cycle is now, when AI crawlers are sucking up anything in and outside of their services to use and build a new product. I wrote more about Mass Effect and seeing your creations in evil here, and I think it holds up here. I wrote:

"What gets me is that your work or body isn’t just ripped from you - it is flipped, integrated, perverted, absorbed, repurposed, and it's now suddenly serving causes you could not have seen coming. I see so many interesting real life parallels to this."

I know they’ve crawled my blog, so inevitably, a part of me is in the machine.

What I wonder about is how the small cogs in the machine can still act like they’re the harmless, socially awkward nerds from the 90s just shooting the shit with the boys. You’re no longer in someone’s basement or building a niche product on the newest phenomenon “computer”, you’re part of a one of the billion dollar companies¹. If you went into tech because everyone had a stick up their ass in finance or other office jobs, hasn’t that dream been over for you in Silicon Valley? Agile here, Scrum there, MBA’s setting goals, marketing lying, PIPs and layoffs, employee surveillance, overtime for products you don’t give a fuck about and that bring a net negative to society. You wanted to work for the underdog, with the outcasts? Where is that nowadays? Your coworkers must have been replaced by now with leetcode grinders who got into it because they heard tech is safe and getting you rich quick.

Are these nerds aware of the power they wield? That Microsoft could collapse my entire government if they took Office365 away from them? Are they aware of being complicit in what I talked about here and here? And is it a part of the revenge fantasy of some to finally be the popular jock with the power? You’re not the victim anymore, you’re victimizing.

I just think you can no longer hide behind that image. You’ve become like the people you used to hate, or at least you love working for and with them and kiss their feet and follow their orders.

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Published 26 Mar, 2025

#2025 #tech