Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by globalnode 51 days ago
isnt it the same sort of reason you guys have actors for presidents? its about how well you can sell the message, not how good you are behind the scenes, thats what normies are for.
2 comments

Thats a big part of it. Customers go into a flock demo with motivated reasoning. "Im scared. Im not sure i should be this scared."

Seeing a vulnerable set of kids happily playing and hearing a confident voice say "A shooter could end all this. We can prevent it" validates that and closes the sale.

If a cautious pragmatist goes to the demo thinking "i know crime stats have declined for decades and im concerned about misuse of technology." Then a performatively confident person says "this is a component of a massive surveillance state ripe for misuse. It will give us footage of crimes and only stop a small percentage of them," how well do you think it would sell?

> "i know crime stats have declined for decades and im concerned about misuse of technology."

Garrett has said that Flock's goal is "zero crime", "made possible by Flock". It's full Minority Report, 1984, Stasi stuff.

That strategy didn't work out well for Makerbot. Tech companies actually need competent leadership with a tech background. You can't pretend they are interchangeable with some run of the mill commodities producer and adopt the same leadership practices.