Netil Radio Weekly
#040
Words
Hello and welcome back,
Going, not going, going, not going, buying, not buying… coca-cola! What a week for Twitter, Mars coloniser and entity everyone is talking about, but no one understands its purpose - freedom of speech. The entity has been beaten from right and left for some time now, and we can only say that our freedom ends when it affects the freedom of someone else. Any other conversation is for academics or it’s pointless.
But let’s talk about Musk, because there are plenty of emotions surrounding the conversation, but not much logic. First of all we should accept that in the system we live in, there will be billionaires. No matter if we like it or not. And the question is - are we just going to hate them, or are we going to expect the responsibility which comes with wealth and power? Accepting the reality with the right answer to this question takes us to the next step - to accept that there is a difference between a billionaire and the billionaire, same as there is a difference between a DJ and the DJ. Some can be bad, some are actually ok and pretty useful for our future.
“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads” is Jeff Hammerbacher’s paraphrase of Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl. It describes the tech reality - technological advance discovered the shortcut for how to make money from money, without any benefit for humanity. The contrast is clear, if you read any sci-fi from the previous century set in the present. Visions were positive, not dystopian. If those expectations meet reality, we would be living with infinite energy sources, controlled weather conditions, fully automated households with robots… and mainly we will be flying to other planets. None of it happened and as a fan of science fiction, Musk realised that we didn’t even try to work on it.
Elon Musk is a megalomaniac. In his case it’s not an insult, but a description of his personality. Focused on interplanetary issues, Musk is not able to see the small issues important for our society. Promising the unimaginable with ease (it’s still not clear if we can travel to Mars with today’s technologies) makes him look like a trickster, regardless of actually great results. SpaceX and Tesla are successful companies. Tesla forced the entire car industry to switch from fossil fuels to electric, which is one of the most important changes of this era and SpaceX forced the entire rocket industry to make rockets reusable. And just those two things alone will play an important role in future history books. There are plenty of things we can discuss about Elon Musk. We can disagree with him on many topics, but we should agree on one thing - he is different from other billionaires. Details play a big role in shaping our perspective on everything. It’s worth watching the faces of construction workers on the Starbase site where SpaceX builds rockets and compare them with all we know about the happiness of Amazon, or Blue Origin employees. Does he expect too much from his employees? People who don’t mind working 16hours a day for the higher purpose of their choice?.. we exist and we don’t mind going to the edge if we see the purpose of our work. You, reading this newsletter is proof in my case.
When it comes to Twitter, we can agree that the current state of social media is a serious issue and we don’t really know what to do with it. Lack of understanding mixed up with unwillingness of tech corporations to understand that endless growth is only an illusion of a broken system, puts us in a limbo of uncertainty. Same place the car or rocket industry was once.
The two most important things Musk said in an interview with TED are getting lost in emotions about the freedom of speech. “We’ll get rid of bots” and “we will make algorithms open source” are probably not solutions, definitely not easy tasks, but maybe it is something that will disrupt the industry enough to change. We can only hope it will be for the better.
In the meantime, you can join us on Netil Market today and tomorrow as we have SODAA Stream and Netil Sessions takeovers, or simply keep listening to Netil Radio. It’s good for you.
Thank you for reading and stay connected
Miro
Coming Up
✧ catch future superstars in today’s SODAA STREAM! All day long until 11pm ✧
We have a line up for Netil Sessions takeover tomorrow:
✧ Selecta Dreadhead & Selecta Afonya 11am-1pm ✧ Selecta Jojo 1-2pm ✧ Cut.Malina 2-3pm ✧ Walshy P, Damage, P.I, KBarz, SMOK£R, Meticulous & Dj Slauka 3-5pm ✧ Dj Emm 5-6pm ✧ Slauka, Gumilap, Buster & Mad X 6-9pm ✧ Yeti On The Pads 9-10 ✧ Kylo Skeng & Janset 10-11pm ✧
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✧ Bil-Sol is joining TSUNIMAN to bring us the PLASMA heath this Sunday 10pm till the end ✧ Vicky Farewell in conversation with Zahra B - Monday 1-3pm ✧ SHE MADE crew is starting their journey with us every 1st Monday of the month 5-7pm ✧ Oren G will be sending signals from Tel Aviv right after 7-9pm ✧ Inhmost & Barefoot on guest duties for Unknown Species closing Monday program 9-11pm ✧ Valentine Comar and her Morning Grooves - Tuesday 11am-1pm ✧ Rumination with super talented Lu.Re Tuesday 1-3pm ✧ Ransom Note Dispatch with all the new tracks we should listen - Tuesday 5-7pm ✧
Full schedule here.
New Music
Tips from the shelves of Jelly Records / 3rd Wednesday of the month 1-3pm
✧ Lèspri Ka : New Directions in Gwoka Music from Guadeloupe 1981-2010 ✧ Daniel Maunick - Persistence ✧ Ponderosa Twins Plus One ✧
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Tips from our contributor of the year - TSUNIMAN / PLASMA - every 1st Sunday of the Month 10pm till late
✧ Mikkel Rev - So Surreal - Repulsive Force PB mix ✧ Prince De Takicardie - Greetings From Psychedelic Space - Shorftrip remix ✧ Box Of Frox - Undertow ✧
Deeper Mainstream
by Miro
✧ Inside the world of the president of Ukraine 🤯 ✧
✧ A recipe how to tackle corruption from Slovakia ✧
✧ Meta and their Meta problems affecting information in Ukraine + Meta support of imaginary empire ✧
✧ A darker view on Musk’s Twitter takeover for a balance to editorial ✧
That’s all for this week
Stay Tuned
NR Team
London’s community voice, broadcast live from a converted shipping container atop of Netil Market - project facilitated and supported by Eat Work Art