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Australian Greens don't believe Silicon Valley can save the world

Election shocker as disruptive meta-disruption comes to Australian politics

If there's one thing that Australia's two main political parties agree on, it's that replicating Silicon Valley on local shores is a Very Good Thing.

The governing Liberal/National coalition and opposition Labor party are both advocating more spending on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) teaching and back tax tweaks to replicate American arrangements felt to foster startups. If we do these things, we're told, a few weeks from now a new generation of coding-capable kids will come up with lots of great ideas that put a rocket under Australia's economy.

But now The Australian Greens have disrupted that cosy narrative, with candidate Jim Casey dropping the bombshell below in The Grauniad:

While the smart kids in Silicon Valley may claim that data, artificial intelligence and new technologies like block chain will turbo charge technology and solve that old problem of resource depletion – I argue it won’t. The robots won’t save us from water scarcity, the loss of arable land or indeed the loss of fish stocks as the oceans become more acidic.

Casey penned the piece containing that quote in response to the surfacing of the old Tweet below.

Overthrowing capitalism is, say Casey's critics, a bit of an old-fashioned and/or fringe idea that shows he's out of touch with mainstream Australia.

Here at El Reg we think his remarks about technology are far more dangerous, because as we all know Big Data and the Blockchain will revolutionise everything, more or less instantly, so that the Internet of Soil becomes a reality and deals with that depletion problem.

Don't the Greens realise that the Silicon Valley way of getting stuff done is the best way to do anything! Never mind that there's no affordable accomodation within 50kms of San Francisco! Dispel any thoughts about giving employees share options as a way to keep wages low. Keep that tired “robots will turn humanity into cat food” trope to yourself. And above all, don't even whisper that venture-capital-funded businesses go bust more often than not, and that the sages of VC expect that to happen. Also, we'll have none of this lateral thinking about how the current government actually delayed the teaching of coding in schools and watered down the curriculum.

One last thing: don't you dare mention that by the time any kids have endured the whole of the new Digital Technologies Curriculum, some time in the 2030s, the current love for STEM will likely have passed.

Instead, embrace a future in which Silicon Valley delivers Soylent as the only menu option other than artificial meat McLab Burgers, and Australia adopts Silicon Valley-style capitalism for everything. ®

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