Comment by Avicebron
3 years ago
I think it's pretty well understood that few things happen in a vacuum and while you're probably right that it's rare for people to sit down and say to each other "alright, let's make star trek" people certainly gravitate to things that interest them and I imagine that certain genres of fiction have embedded themselves deep within the psyche of a lot of people in tech.
Related tangent, the first time I met a meme IRL was when I first sat down with the CTO of a pretty well funded "startup" in the valley and as he was trying sell me on working there, regaling me with the story of him and his cofounders (good 30 years my senior) hustle and grind in the Stanford library before they started while I looked at his model of the Enterprise on his desk...
I mean sure I thought it was well understood too, but the article opens with:
"Today’s Silicon Valley billionaires grew up reading classic American science fiction. Now they’re trying to make it come true, embodying a dangerous political outlook."
So the author seems to think that tech billionaires do actually sit down and ask how to make Star Trek real.
People being generically inspired by science and technology can happen in many ways. Like, is Musk primarily inspired by sci fi, making money, a love of business, a love of engineering, politics .... you can't really separate out the different factors like Stross wants to do.