Steward Brand is still optimistic.
Stewart Brand was a Merry Prankster. He promoted New Games and World Game. He initiated the San Francisco Trips Festival. He coined the term "personal computer". He predicted that computers would be the next important trend after psychedelic drugs. He showed us the Media Lab. He asked us to notice how buildings learn.
When I was 17, in The Whole Earth Catalog, he showed me who else was thinking about long term view, systems thinking, ecology, sustainability, DIY life, watershed consciousness, psychedelics, spirit, and community/economy. He did it by showing me a whole lot of other people who weren't waiting but just figuring out how to run a business, or a farm, or a magazine, or a school. He promised and delivered: "Access to tools".
John Markoff, who reported on science and technology for The NY Times from 1988 to 2017, just wrote a book about my first hero - “Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand”. The Times just published a chapter.
Article: What the Silicon Valley Prophet Sees on the Horizon