We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.
Robert Oppenheimer: Interview about the Trinity explosion, first broadcast as part of the television documentary The Decision to Drop the Bomb (1965), produced by Fred Freed.
Here’s this pathetic little storefront that used to press some orthodontist’s khakis. Now it’s got a name that sounds like a pharmaceutical startup crossed with a Tinder bio. Science Exchange. Jesus Christ.
I’ve got the Oppenheimer quote sitting here like a neon sign screaming “THIS MEANS SOMETHING,” and maybe it does. These weren’t the guys splitting atoms in Los Alamos, they were splitting market shares, disrupting dry cleaning into obsolescence so they could disrupt everything else.
Oppenheimer at least knew he’d become Death. These assholes? They thought they were becoming Life, man, they thought they were saving the world with APIs and pivot tables and whatever the hell else gets venture capitalists hard. The dry cleaner knew what he was, a guy removing stains. But Science Exchange? They were removing the very concept of limitation, or so they told themselves between funding rounds.
And that’s the real mindfuck: the dry cleaner probably did more actual good for his neighborhood than whatever algorithmic wet dream got funded in his old space. But he didn’t scale. He didn’t disrupt. He just cleaned clothes until he didn’t anymore