Rorschach Media: Andreessen’s Atoms, Bits, and Altruism
The pandemic’s prevailing call-to-arms wasn't an OpEd, it was a litmus test
In case you missed it, Marc Andreessen recently penned an essay entitled “It’s Time to Build”. If you’re optimistic, it was a call-to-arms for a country and a world that have been ravaged by COVID-19 and its downstream effects. If you’re cynical, it was, well, as one anon noted:
An alternate headline could be Man Whose Entire Career Has Been In Software Thinks Other People Should Invest In Physical Businesses… it’s pretty odd to see a guy whose firm invests in scooters & crypto believes other people should be leading the way into lower margin, way higher friction hardware businesses.
There are many such jaundiced interpretations of what Andreessen actually wrote, which is rather concise and worth reading in full. He talked about everything from hardware to software to wetware to financial capital to fixed capital:
Every step of the way, to everyone around us, we should be asking the question, what are you building? What are you building directly, or helping other people to build, or teaching other people to build, or taking care of people who are building? If the work you’re doing isn’t either leading to something being built or taking care of people…
