inf-site/quotes/0e5a082f-912f-47c9-8074-14e9399d5cd6

author: Jim Kunstler
content: "I was invited to give a talk at Google headquarters down in Mountain View\
  \ last Tuesday. They sent somebody to fetch me (in a hybrid car, zowee!) from my\
  \ hotel in San Francisco \u2014 as if I had any choice about catching a train down,\
  \ right? Google HQ was a glass office park pod tucked into an inscrutable tangle\
  \ of off-ramps, berms, manzanita clumps, and curb-cuts. But inside, it was all tricked\
  \ out like a kindergarten. They had pool tables, and inflatable yoga balls, and\
  \ $6000 electronic vibrating massage lounge chairs, and snack stations deployed\
  \ at twenty-five step intervals, with lucite bins filled with chocolate raisins\
  \ and granola. The employees dressed like children. There were two motifs: \"skateboard\
  \ rat\" and \"10th grade nerd.\" I suppose quite a few of them were millionaires.\
  \ Many of the work cubicles were literally modular children's playhouses. I gave\
  \ my spiel about the global oil problem and the unlikelihood that \"alternative\
  \ energy\" would even fractionally replace it, and quite a few of the Googlers became\
  \ incensed.\n\n\"Yo, Dude, you're so, like, wrong! We've got, like, technology!\"\
  \n\nYeah, well, they weren't interested in making a distinction between energy and\
  \ technology (or, more precisely where Google is concerned, a massive web-based\
  \ advertising scheme \u2014 because it is finally clear that all this talk about\
  \ \"connectivity\" just leads to more commercial shilling, shucking, jiving, and\
  \ generally fucking with your headspace in the interstices of whatever purposeful\
  \ activity one may be struggling to enact on the internet)."
id: 0e5a082f-912f-47c9-8074-14e9399d5cd6