The new gods are running into a bit of trouble. From the soap opera playing out at Twitter HQ, the too-big-to-fail bankruptcies in the cryptocurrency space, to mass tech layoffs, the past month has seen successive headlines declaring a litany of woes facing the bullish tech boyos in Silicon Valley and beyond.

The minute-by-minute coverage of Elon Musks escapades and the global levels of interest in the FTX collapse both go well beyond what youd expect from a business story. Im willing to gamble a few Bitcoins that the popular fixation has little to do with any particular interest in successful software engineering; rather it is the personalities who inhabit these spaces, and the philosophies that propel them in their godlike ambition. What is their end goal, we wonder. What drives them, beyond the pursuit of growth? It is easy to assume that money is all that motivates the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Musk and Jeff Bezos. Except, when you start to examine the mindsets of these men, its clear that cash is far from the whole story.

The concept of effective altruism has had its day in court after FTX, the worlds second largest cryptocurrency exchange announced that, oops, it was mysteriously short of $8bn and would be filing for bankruptcy, post haste. As the dust and fraud allegations settle, the personal guiding principles of FTXs millennial chief executive, Sam Bankman-Fried, have come to the fore. Bankman-Fried ostensibly was driven into crypto by an adherence to the effective altruism movement. Originally espousing giving as much targeted time and money to philanthropy as possible, EA has been morphed by its most prominent practitioners into getting very, very rich and then spending that money on projects that better the human race. This earn-to-give philosophy is dependent on data-driven analysis of what causes offer the best returns of betterment. Its utilitarianism with a god complex.

Since Bankman-Frieds spectacular fall from grace, it seems as if this doctrine may be doomed to the same downward spiral as its most famous disciple. Its hard to argue that you possess the best instincts to improve the prospects of the human race when you cant even keep your own affairs or billions in customer funds in order.

Then there was the allegation last week by the Insider journalist Julia Black that Musk, along with other billionaires, appear to be engaged in their own personal eugenics programme via a movement called pronatalism. Black writes that pronatalism an ideology centred on having children to reverse falling birthrates in European countries, and prevent a predicted population collapse is taking hold in wealthy tech and venture-capitalist circles, with the aid of hi-tech genetic screening.

Musk has championed pronatalist ideas publicly. Privately the Tesla co-founder is, in his own words, doing my part; he has 10 children known to the public, two of whom are twins he fathered with an AI expert who serves as an executive for his Neuralink company. But the ideas go beyond Musk and into the canyons of Silicon Valley; the worlds richest and most powerful people see it as their duty, Black claims, to replicate themselves as many times as possible.

Blacks subjects also namecheck effective altruism, longtermism (which prioritises the distant future over the concerns of today), and transhumanism (the evolution of humanity beyond current limitations via tech), as complementary philosophies. The concept of legacy is key to understanding our tech pioneers. As one interviewee tells Black, The person of this subculture really sees the pathway to immortality as being through having children. Given that Musks genius business record is one of multiple near-bankruptcies before he even arrived at Twitter, this rather undermines the theory that the future will be safe only if populated by mini-Musks.

These companies believe that in order to make visions ideas a reality, they require total control of the landscape around them. In his 2017 book World Without Mind, Franklin Foer wrote that Facebook now Meta was founded on the concept of radical transparency a belief that sharing every facet of our lives will somehow result in social good. The metaverse, in which we dont just share our lives on social media but conduct them within it, is this ideas logical conclusion. It has already lost the company $9.4bn.

Silicon Valley and its missionary outposts are dominated not only by the pursuit of growth, which is a means to an end. The underlying raison detre tying these various tech titans together is their fervour for enacting their own personal theological outlooks in supposed service of the wider world. To do this, they must dominate and monopolise remake society in their image, platform by integrated platform.

When we view these monoliths as businesses like any other, or allow them to claim global monopolies, we fail to realise that they are competing for more than our attention or our cash: they are competing for the right to dictate what our societies look like. So it matters a great deal when that vision falters, or fails altogether. Its the stuff of myth and folktale played out via forums and Wall Street Journal tip lines; the emperors slowly shedding their clothes. We are watching would-be gods shrink back to being men once more.

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The gods of Silicon Valley are falling to earth. So are their warped visions for society - The Guardian