This is not yet a full formed thought, but in the United States both in person and virtually there is a permeation of tech optimism, often coupled with a personal sense of financial abundance via tech. This is likely true in SF almost all the time, but I hear friends of mine talk about SF as if it's this unique destination where startups are valued for million before ever producing revenue, and the opportunity to become a millionaire, seemingly overnight, is right there. This has spread to DC where a lot of people seem to have a friend or know someone who works in defense tech who is about to be acquired or IPO. "They're not saving for their 401K, they are just putting all of their money in stock pre-IPO."

Online, particularly on X, there is also this overwhelming sense of opportunity. People are generating hundreds of thousands of likes by posting Claude prompts and articles about what AI could, or should be, is flooding everyone's feed. Interestingly, that's coupled with an increase in articles built into Twitter that seek to identify what exactly is wrong with America/society/anything, mention an ancient philosopher, and recommend that we should aspire to know ourselves and return to the material world. The irony of course being that the article is built specifically for a platform that constantly engages in attention farming and the writer is making money off of the very practice they recommend not engaging in.

I don't have a clear through line here yet but I wanted to jot it down since I hear this theme all the time and I'm not sure how to square the tech optimism with the overwhelming sense of wanting to decouple from tech from the exact same class of people.