Moshe Vardi is the Karen Ostrum George Distinguished Service Professor in Computational Engineering at Rice University, US.
It is time for all
computing professionalsbillionaires and corporations to accept responsibility forcomputing’shumanity’s current stateFTFY
In all seriousness, Vardi correctly identifies the problems with “move fast and break things” and “efficiency at the expense of resilience”. Yet then uses victim-blaming language that “we allowed” mega corporations to exist. Even if the “we” is read as “society at large”, it cannot be reconciled with the call-to-action, which unambiguously targets the individuals of the industry. Without effective organization, no amount of individualized action can overcome a structural problem. It’s unclear to me what his point is.
Fascism is the concept this guy is lacking in order to describe what’s happening here, and its consequence: imperialism.
Oh wait, wikipedia:
Vardi is open about his Zionism and is listed as a signatory on an anti-academic-boycott letter “United Against the Academic Boycott of Israel,” that denies that genocide has ever occurred in Palestine, despite an inquiry by a United Nations Independent International Commission and International Association of Genocide Scholars stating that the legal definition of genocide has been met according to the Genocide Convention. Vardi supports a two-state solution and served 5 years in the Israel Defense Forces, participating in two wars during his service. Vardi has remarked that boycotts against Israel on university campuses are “deeply distasteful”.
He is fascist after all, Wow.
Having seen one of his talks on efficiency vs resilience, I’m extremely doubtful fascist is appropriate. For one, fascists are ultra-capitalist and he was pretty scathing of the capitalist mode iirc.
The article is also clearly critical of The Empire, which is standard sci-fi fascism.