“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” ― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, year 1995
He was a great scientist and a great communicator, but also a dick.
https://www.iphonesavior.com/2012/03/codename-butt-head-astronomer.html
I’m not sure what part of that anecdote makes Sagan a dick. Jobs on the other hand…
Steve Jobs wasn’t at Apple when this happened. Sagan sued for an internal codename that was not meant to go public. Steve was a dick. Carl was a dick. People who achieve a lot can be dicks.
You think Steve Jobs, egomaniac, is the measure against Carl Sagan. interesting.
“in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe” - Carl Sagan
Sounds like worshipers of Steve Jobs.
You don’t know what you’re talking about, clearly. Copy / pasta from a diff reply: Steve Jobs wasn’t at Apple when this happened. Sagan sued for an internal codename that was not meant to go public. Steve was a dick. Carl was a dick. People who achieve a lot can be dicks.
But since your comment has me worshiping Jobs (a flawed person, no doubt), why don’t you get fucked.
Dude, I worked on the private staff of the 3rd richest person in the entire world as a consultant in the era these things were going on, who also was a huge Carl Sagan fan and was involved with Contact film was being made. I know the behind the scenes culture of these people, I worked in social media for them (and moderated them)!
The cult of Steve Jobs didn’t require him to be there. He was often a very superficial man who promoted and cultivated extremely shallow and superficial values. This was just a few years before Bill Gates rescued Apple (where would we be in 2025 if the Apple iPod and iPhone were never saved by Microsoft wanting a Pepsi-Coke two-brand society?)
The 1990’s of Apple and Microsoft were all about a race to capture as much mindshare of the audience with computers are easy, don’t listen to teachers, everything is point and click simple while we dump money into our pockets. Cultivating a closed-source world (what automotive people called a “welded hood” on a car) with high-profit taking from a non-educated uninformed public. And Carl Sagan was a TEACHER, and EDUCATOR, first and foremost… criticizing the promotion of superficial understanding that Apple and Microsoft were trying to exploit with “it is so easy” marketing.
No, you have a major literacy problem. I’m talking about the workers who went along with the mocking of Sagan. The Apple employees. But your egomania thinks I’m talking about your own self. The same kind of egomania that the “pure brand” of Apple promotes in the entire society.
let me repeat what I said that you think is a comment about you:
Sounds like worshipers of Steve Jobs. (The Employees at Apple who went along with the codename as a ego-trick against someone with secret language)
Lemmy users think every message is about their own ego just as much as Twitter users, it is horrific how people discussing dehumanizing others (secret code-names to mock Carl Sagan) have such poor media literacy and think that every single posting is about them. The very act of renaming the “code-name” is a bamboozle upon the public consumers, the kind of behind-the-scenes egomania that goes on in the computer industry by the worshiped clergy of technology.
“I am constantly amazed at how obediently people accept explanations that begin with the words “The computer shows …” or “The computer has determined …” It is Technopoly’s equivalent of the sentence “It is God’s will,” and the effect is roughly the same.” ― Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, 1992
Apple cultist are always cringe.
They’ll look past all the company’s own faults and then point finger and someone else like they have a moral high ground.
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