“I do think some of these folks actually do not know other people are real.” Rony Abovitz · The AI XR Podcast.
September 2026
The Magic Leap founder is explaining why he thinks some people at the top of the industry treat others as assets to be traded and manipulated. He offers this as a serious diagnosis rather than an insult, and immediately makes room for the tech CEOs he knows who do connect with people. The episode was revisiting Paulina Borsook's 1990s book on Silicon Valley libertarianism.
Transcript
It's not real
anyway.
I do think some of these folks actually do not know other people are real. It sounds crazy, but if you cannot connect with other people, you don't know that they're real people. But when you could connect with, in defense of other tech CEOs, I know who have a humanistic heart, they do connect and they know that's not right. But if you don't have that ability to connect with other humans, you kind of go in this weird direction you described.
I totally agree with you because I felt That for a really long time. You know, everything's been gamified, and that's not a good thing. But the thing I always keep coming back to, and I'm a broken record about this, is that when the Netscape IPO happened, that signaled the beginning of the end because what that meant is all about the stockholder theory of value. And that's what this.
Just what I was going to say.
Yeah, that's all it's about. Whereas I was familiar with the earlier generation of Silicon Valley guys, mostly guys, that they were interested in creating something that was good, it was real. It was, you know, I watched that moment happen, and I thought when Silicon Valley got invaded by the Wall Street bros, finance bros, or Silicon Valley took on that mindset, that was the beginning of the end. And what I often, you know, when I've been so appalled by the tech CEOs and their embrace of Trump, I thought this is all just about the stockholder theory of value. That's it. I mean, I think it's very cynical.
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