In many ways, More Everything Forever is the angry rant that all sensible people want to hear right now. The consolidation of power that is happening in Big Tech and the AI space in particular is frightening because of the clear lack of empathy and compassion that its leaders show the world. The book is at its best when it is skewering so many of the single-minded concepts that drive the extremely rich to believe that they have the answers for everything. Really, that only answer is more, better, faster technology.
Becker rightly points out that the celebration of focus, business progress, and action we see from many of these technology leaders is always coupled with a suspicion of the humanities and fulfilling the goal of a college education to make a person whole. It is indeed this lack of an education in art, literature, history, the social sciences, and philosophy beyond reading Golden Age science fiction and possibly the creepy works of Ayn Rand that makes so many of these tech billionaires believe that every solution is technological. While he misses this moment’s weird Silicon Valley shift further right and into religious sensibilities that probably slipped more starkly into the light after he finished composing the book, this discussion is where the book is most astute.
While Becker speaks the language of so many of the subcultures of futurists, it does feel like he sometimes discounts the value of an idea because they are being applied in a ham-fisted way by people who lack any concern about the comity of man. While this longtime science fiction reader appreciates him unpacking the value of this genre for its speculative power, he denounces its value based on the authors rather than the ideas, writers from a certain moment in time, and whose values may not align with our own. Just because a bunch of billionaires choose to read a certain novel only for how they seem to inform their personal philosophy, it certainly doesn’t mean these books don’t have value and that they have not formed the building blocks to get us to future works that provide an enormous amount of value. I will not discount the value that Isaac Asimov had in advancing our way of thinking about robotics (and so much more) just because he had some views and took some actions that are not aligned with modern morality. The book does the same with long-term thinking in general, but that’s a larger subject to unpack that warrants a future blog post.
Those quibbles aside, the book shines brightest when creating effective arguments against the assertions of extremely rich people who believe that their business success means they understand exactly how the future should be built. Becker is correct in saying that we cannot take directly from science fiction to plan the future. Many genre books are cautionary, and deeply misreading them seems to be more popular these days than ever before. His points here are thoughtful and useful for those engaged in direct discussion about how we need to weigh the value of long-term planning against the opportunity cost for helping people right now.
I’m reluctant to criticize the book too much for its shortcomings because we need this perspective. His intense dislike for What We Owe The Future is warranted and well-explained, even if mocking actor Joseph-Gordon Leavitt for his tearful read of the tome might be a trifle mean.
When Becker concludes that - Spoiler Alert - the fact that we have 3,000 people working hard to get further up the Forbes Billionaires list is the crux of the problem, he’s provided ample evidence. This extreme inequality being celebrated while we know people are starving, climate change is going to affect the poor disproportionately, and the breakdown of democracy is in full swing means we need to act. His simple acknowledgment that we used to have a sensible approach called progressive taxation that made sure people didn’t become too powerful and power-mad is salient.
While addressing this issue is important, the book leaves solutions to the reader. That’s fair, although I don’t think we need to throw the concept of space travel out the window because we know that there are so many problems on Earth. Solving the problem of extreme wealth inequality should allow us to do both, with a deep focus on solving immediate problems, and not just dreaming that all problems will be solved in the future by the advent of technology and, particularly, artificial intelligence.
Definitely a thoughtful book and one worth reading.

With the rise of disproportionately powerful people like Sam Altman and powerful software tools like ChatGPT, and Elon Musk running amok through the highest levels of government, this is an extremely timely read. As stated in the subtitle, this is a polemic against the "tech bro" attitude that is wielding a disproportionate influence on economics and politics. The gloves are off, and although I largely agree with the author, his obvious disdain and outright cynicism sometimes get in the way of the point he's trying to make.

Rather than just attack the handful of odious figures he profiles (although he does plenty of that too), most of the book is attempt to dismantle the underlying philosophy and ideologies that motivate the often appalling business practices of companies like SpaceX and Amazon.

The early parts of the book revolve around the likelihood of achieving AGI (i.e. human level artificial intelligence) anytime soon, and whether we should welcome or fear such an advance. This ties in with related issues such as transhumanism and the Singularity (i.e. artificial superintelligence). Becker goes particularly hard after William MacAskill (What We Owe The Future) and Ray Kurzweil (The Singularity Is Near), scoffing at their ideas of Effective Altruism/Long-termism and exponential technological growth, respectively. He also takes aim at Eliezer Yudkowsky and his Rationalist approach, and Nick Bostrom for his views on The Alignment Problem. Finally, he turns to space exploration, debunking Elon musk's plans to colonize Mars and Jeff Bezos's desire to establish floating space habitats.

I had three main problems with the book. First, it's extremely focused on the US (with a brief foray to Oxford, UK), specifically on Silicon Valley tech bros, and mostly limited to a handful of particularly obnoxious tech billionaires. It would have been interesting and instructive to also gain an understanding of how researchers and business leaders in the rest of Europe, China, Japan, and other high-tech regions are approaching the challenges. He talks a lot about the perils of algorithmic bias and how rich white dudes have too much power, but then exclusively lavishes his attention on them.

Secondly, he ultimately fails to adequately differentiate between the lofty idealistic goal of using technology to improve society and the handful of asshole billionaires who have perverted those ideals to their own gain. As a result, some of his arguments are reduced to ad hominin attacks against easy targets like Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel. Similarly, he does the guilt-by-association thing by loudly pointing out the initiatives that baddies like Jeffrey Epstein and Sam Bankman-Fried supported financially.

Finally, he dismisses too many possibilities for future advancements based on the current state of technology. Just because it currently takes 6-9 months to get to Mars doesn't mean that next gen rockets won't be able to get there much faster. Similarly for the prospect of building a space elevator. Or mining asteroids. Or developing a computer that's as smart as people. Sure, we can argue about the practicalities and costs and whether these things will like be feasible in 5 years, 50 years, or 500 years, but on a philosophical level the timing isn't really all that important.

His solution to the thorny ethical dilemmas and inherent uncertainty involved with predicting future technological advancements? Get rid of billionaires! Cap wealth at $500 million, and use the rest to address problems in the here and now, rather than squander money on frivolous pipe dreams. To me this seemed like a petty and rather limited answer to deep and important issues. Becker talks about the utopian visions of people like Isaac Asimov, Gene Roddenberry, and Carl Sagan, and I felt like he was too easily derailed by his obvious hatred towards the small group of rich white men and hence lost focus of the larger goals and possibilities.

I listened to the audiobook ARC on NetGalley, which was nicely narrated by Greg Tremblay. Although he did get carried away a couple of times with the dripping scorn, much like the author.