The cult of tech | MIT Technology Review

The headlines seem to write themselves (if only such clichés were no longer allowed in the age of ChatGPT and generative artificial intelligence). Technology is a cult. But it’s a metaphor, right? Correct?

When I first saw Michael Saylor’s Twitter account, I wasn’t sure. Thaler is an entrepreneur, technology executive and former billionaire. He was once reportedly the richest man in Washington, D.C., but in 2000, when he was in his 30s, he settled with the SEC and lost most of his $7 billion net worth after the SEC filed charges against him. . Two of his colleagues who worked for a company called MicroStrategy were charged with inaccurate financial performance reporting. But I didn’t know who he was at the time.

In 2021, Seiler started popping up in my Twitter feed. His profile photo shows a chiseled man with silver hair and stubble sitting in a powerful pose, looking directly into the camera, wearing a black shirt unbuttoned to expose a large section of his neck. This is a typical promotional photo of a technology entrepreneur. In addition to the lightning bolts shooting out of his eyes, there is also a golden halo crown. And then there’s his tweet:

As a humanist chaplain at MIT, I follow many pastors, rabbis, imams, and monks online. Few religious leaders dare to be so pious on social media. They know few readers would like to see such arrogance. So why does this seemingly fanatical behavior of cryptocurrency salesmen seem to have an audience? Are tech leaders like Thaler leading a true cult?

Bretton Putter, a startup expert and CEO of CultureGene Consulting, says this needn’t be a major problem: “It’s almost impossible for a business to become a full-blown cult,” Putter writes. He believes that if a tech company or other business happens to resemble a cult, that can be a good thing: “If you successfully build a cult-like culture, like Apple, Tesla, Zappos, Southwest Airlines, No. 1 Destrom, like Harley-Davidson, you’ll experience employee (and customer) loyalty, dedication and commitment that goes well beyond the norm.

Are tech company cults really that benign? Or should we be worried? To find out, I spoke with Steve Hassan, a top expert on exit counseling, or helping people escape destructive cults.

In the early 1970s, while studying poetry at Queens College in New York City, 19-year-old Hassan was recruited to join the Unification Church, a notoriously manipulative cult also known as the Unificationists. Over the next 27 months, as a member of the church, Hassan helped the church with its fundraising, recruitment and political activities, including multiple in-person meetings with cult leader Moon Sun-Myung. He lived in public housing, slept only a few hours a night, and sold carnations for free on street corners seven days a week. He was told to drop out of college and give his bank account to the church. In 1976, he fell asleep at the wheel while driving a Moonie fundraising van and crashed into the back of a tractor-trailer at high speed. He called his sister from the hospital and his parents hired former members to help “deprogram” him and free him from the cult.

After the 1978 mass suicide and murder in Jonestown drew attention to the deadly dangers of cult mind control, Hassan founded a nonprofit organization, Ex-Moon Inc. research Ph.D.), initiated a number of related projects, and wrote a popular book about how the practices with which he was so familiar have seeped into the mainstream of American politics in recent years. (That 2019 book, Cult of Trump: A leading cult expert explains how the president uses mind controlIn early 2024, a video titled “God Made Trump” went viral throughout the campaign. The leader of the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump in 2021.