L.M. Sacasas

Writer behind the newsletter The Convivial Society, focused on technology, culture, and the human condition. His essay “Resistance Is Futile: The Myth of Tech Inevitability” supplies the pivot question and the closing argument of Kyle’s essay The Value Chain of Capital: is technological progress inevitable? — and its answer, no (source: The Value Chain of Capital - Research).

Sacasas’s core move is to name what he calls the “rhetoric of technological determinism” — “narratives of inevitability… that frame technological development as a deterministic process to which human beings have no choice but to adapt.” He argues these trends “are not merely matters of technical development… They are also functions of economic policies, legal structures, political power, and shifting cultural values,” and that the appearance of inevitability “most often arise[s] from a far more banal source: self-interest, usually of the crassly commercial variety” — a trick “tech companies are prepared to exploit.” In the Value Chain essay Kyle pairs this with Thomas Misa (whom Sacasas cites) on how “the victors write the history… and the technological ‘paths not taken’ are often suppressed.” Where Aswath Damodaran gives Kyle the “capital chain is a pricing game” half, Sacasas gives the “progress is not inevitable” half — together licensing the pivot from the capital value chain to the innovation value chain: if progress isn’t a guaranteed output of capital, then what you measure is what you get (source: The Value Chain of Capital - Research). The same framing seeds the Determinism page (its technological sense) and the Storytelling page (narrative and technology as twin human capacities).

Where this appears

• The Value Chain of Capital - Research — “Resistance Is Futile” is the source for the essay’s anti-inevitability pivot; cites Thomas Misa on the paths not taken.
• Determinism — source of the “rhetoric of technological determinism” framing (the technological strand of the concept).
• Storytelling — narrative-and-technology as twin human capacities.
• Thomas Misa — Sacasas quotes Misa for the “victors write the history” line that grounds the argument.