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That businessman/reality TV star who just won the New Hampshire primary is far from the only famous person addicted to sharing his current thoughts and mood on Twitter. When you do that, you're bound to eventually make a mistake that has consequences. This time it was Marc Andreessen, venture capitalist and co-founder of Netscape (and lead developer for the Mosaic Web browser before that), who got busted for tweeting a thought that shouldn't have left the hotel bar:
Anti-colonialism has been economically catastrophic for the Indian people for decades. Why stop now?
Indians complained; evidently they've grown accustomed to having their own country. It was noticed that Andreessen sits on the board of Facebook, which has been unsuccessfully trying to peddle free Internet service (featuring Facebook, of course) to India for awhile. Oops. Mark Zuckerberg wasn't pleased.
Andreessen, a master of the multi-part tweet, quickly backpedaled. And the original tweet was deleted.
takyon: The Register's Andrew Orlowski has a partial defense of Andreessen's comments that you may find illuminating and/or entertaining.
(Score: 2) by jcross on Thursday February 11 2016, @06:36PM
I agree that it's not the same scale as true colonialism (a micro-colonialism, perhaps :P), but it does amount to sending money (or eyeballs traded for money or whatever) out of the country. India has a history of protectionism, but there are ways that it's been good for them. Imagine a thought experiment where the USA and India each entirely closed their borders. Which would be better off? I think what India has that we in the US don't is resilient and comprehensive local economies on all scales from micro to macro. The US is more brittle than many people realize or want to admit. I'm not saying India is perfect in any sense, just that their policies make different tradeoffs, and do carry some advantages.
And come on, how the hell does MA or any American have standing to criticize foreign governments for being "anti-citizen"? Indians still have a fair bit of Gandhiji in their political DNA. The closest analogy I can think of is if Americans had elected MLK president or something and actually took his thoughts on class seriously before shooting him and naming a holiday and some roads after him. If he were as widely revered a hero as George Washington, then we'd be talking.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by opinionated_science on Thursday February 11 2016, @07:23PM
perhaps we have entered an age of corporate colonialism. I mean Google, Apple, Amazon, FB etc....they are trying to be "life brands" to sell their stuff.