Find a successful scientist or technologist and somewhere in there you will see someone driven by raw ego, spurred on by emotive impulses that might sound base or even unethical but are nonetheless an under-recognized part of why we get the technologies we do. The Silicon Valley mythos of the heroic start-up founder single-handedly empire building in the face of a hostile and ignorant world is persistent for a reason. It is the self-image technologists too often still aspire to, an archetype to emulate, a fantasy that still drives new technologies.
