I wasn’t aware that the meme that one should “do what you love” came from the tech boom. I was given to understand by Alain de Botton (I believe in his TED talk) that this idea orginiated in France among the upper class at the same time that life long romantic love began to become a thing. Is he wrong, or is it that the tech boom allowed the lower and middle classes to buy into this idea that passion can be economic sustaining?
It seems to me that Silicon Valley hijacked “passion”. One of the things they want it to do is prevent people from perceiving them as the robber barons of the 21st Century by giving the impression that they founded technology companies to follow their personal passion rather than to make obscene amounts of money with IP assets. Not that there is anything wrong with doing that, I wish I had.
No, he’s probably not wrong but he’s also not relevant. The OP probably isn’t importing the meme directly from 19th century France. In the US, you import the meme from two general sources: hippies or the tech industry. Given the author’s own description of his life, the tech industry seems most likely.
But who knows: maybe he’s a meme hipster and only imports French originals?
I wasn’t aware that the meme that one should “do what you love” came from the tech boom. I was given to understand by Alain de Botton (I believe in his TED talk) that this idea orginiated in France among the upper class at the same time that life long romantic love began to become a thing. Is he wrong, or is it that the tech boom allowed the lower and middle classes to buy into this idea that passion can be economic sustaining?
It seems to me that Silicon Valley hijacked “passion”. One of the things they want it to do is prevent people from perceiving them as the robber barons of the 21st Century by giving the impression that they founded technology companies to follow their personal passion rather than to make obscene amounts of money with IP assets. Not that there is anything wrong with doing that, I wish I had.
No, he’s probably not wrong but he’s also not relevant. The OP probably isn’t importing the meme directly from 19th century France. In the US, you import the meme from two general sources: hippies or the tech industry. Given the author’s own description of his life, the tech industry seems most likely.
But who knows: maybe he’s a meme hipster and only imports French originals?