Novelist Neal Stephenson sure does have a high opinion of his influence on the future of technology

That's what Stephenson told a lecture hall full of fan boys at MIT the other day. That it was him and other sci-fi writers who have been retarding technological progress with his writing. I doubt it though. The sad truth is that venture capital and government funding for technology research is and always has been, quite scarce, and is largely awarded in politically motivated fashion.

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Max Stirner (Kaspar Schmidt)

Max Stirner And The Heresy Of Self-Abundance (Maynard Whitlow @ The Anarchist Library)

"The ethical agreement between Stirner and Bridgman is striking. Both men, in denying the sacredness of institutions, are simply demanding, in Bridgman’s words, that ‘society be so constructed that it serves the individual, not that the individual serve society.’ On this matter of force, Bridgman is in exact accord with Stirner: ‘The only compulsion that society can exert on me is the compulsion of superior and external force.’ And Bridgman adds that he will have no part of the ‘conspiracy of silence . . . which attempts to shield my children from the realization that society must rest on a background of force.’  Nor should we lose sight of the fact that the ‘altruist’ (an ‘involuntary’ egoist) assumes that he has the right to use force to gain his ‘altruistic’ ends. "

Stirner never got his due for the contributions he made to philosophy.