Interview with Stanford comp lit professor Adrian Daub on the naiveté of undergrads eager to work in tech, “useless” VC Twitter, and challenges to SV narratives
In the early 2010s, professor Adrian Daub began noticing changes in some Stanford undergraduates that troubled him. Tweets: @toddwalker , @dancharvey , @issielapowsky , @protocol , and @chrmanning Tweets: Todd Walker / @toddwalker : “Nice people made the best Nazis.” https://twitter.com/... @dancharvey : “Daub asked the student whether she found Palantir's technology at all creepy. The student responded that she wasn't worried because she knew several upperclassmen who worked at Palantir and they were all nice people.” https://www.protocol.com/... Issie Lapowsky / @issielapowsky : I deeply enjoy this quote in this story by @ChitkaraHirsh, defining VC Twitter as “people who just seem kind of lost, who feel like they need to be opining on something because they're rich as hell and kind of useless.” https://www.protocol.com/... @protocol : A professor noticed a pattern: students take a leave of absence to work in the tech industry, then return a year later, often deflated and confused by their forays into the tech world. How he's confronting the tech world: https://www.protocol.com/... Christopher Manning / @chrmanning : .@adriandaub speaks truth to Silicon Valley's prophets: “There are all these tech CEOs who believe they are the victims of random meanies on Twitter. And you think, how can you be so blind so as to not understand what the power differentials are here?” https://www.protocol.com/...