iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

New article out today in Finance and Society: venture capital as an anti-politics machine — how VC-backed hypergrowth hollows out sovereign authority and renders the state a ratifier of transformations already imposed on society. Read it here, open access: doi.org/10.1017/fas....

doi.org

Political necessity in an age of hypergrowth: Venture capital and the Silicon Valley Consensus | Finance and Society | Cambridge Core

Political necessity in an age of hypergrowth: Venture capital and the Silicon Valley Consensus

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

PitchBook: >25% of unicorns likely sub-$1B, while total unicorn value holds steady (top 10 > 50%). Hypergrowth was always meta-growth -- valuation above fundamentals, organizing time, capital, expectation. Exit well: simulation becomes institution Miss the moment: undercorn

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

Two neurosurgeons just raised $25M to use living neurons as compute. Wow. Capital abides no limits. If biology = infrastructure, we’re not just solving an energy crunch but paving a path to biocommodification: life as circuit component. fortune.com/2026/02/11/t...

fortune.com

Two neurosurgeons just raised $25 million betting brain cells can (someday) outcompute silicon | Fortune

The Biological Computing Co. (TBC) has raised $25 million in seed funding, Fortune has learned.

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

Interesting piece on VCs using “AI second brains.” Legitimation dressed as efficiency. VC turns capital + audacity into “genius.” AI now accelerates it: faster theses, denser hype, cleaner inevitability. Future “necessity” can’t arrive fast enough it seems. www.businessinsider.com/how-venture-...

businessinsider.com

We asked 13 rising-star VCs how they use AI. Here's what they told us.

For up-and-coming venture capitalists, tools like ChatGPT and NotebookLM have become a core part of the job.

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

Musk’s SpaceX–xAI move is less “AI ambition,” more VC power logic at planetary scale. Loss-making xAI gets laundered through SpaceX’s future necessity; it’s an attempt to capitalize on anticipated dependence (orbital compute) before it exists. Contrarian optionality: burn now, monopolize later. 🚀📈

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 02/11/2025

Seen at an AI investment summit hosted by UC Berkeley today. We need to stop being so overly deperndent on AI folks.

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

The second (excellent) article from Distinktion’s special issue on Silicon Valley imaginaries is now available. Check it out below.

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Reposted by Mark Howard

Olivier Jutel 🇵🇸 @ojutel.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

A recording of my seminar "A Critical Theory of VC" www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhJy...

youtube.com

A Critical Theory of Venture Capital

YouTube video by Olivier Jutel

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

Having Jaron Lanier visit my Ethics and Technology class today to talk to my students was a real treat. Generous, thoughtful, and refreshingly optimistic - the class and I feel so very lucky to have had this opportunity.

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

Hey folks — my friend Randy is running for congress in a Republican-held district and needs support. Randy is running a grassroots campaign but the Democratic establishment wants someone who will take corporate money. Please, if you’re able, consider chipping in: secure.actblue.com/donate/callt...

secure.actblue.com

I just gave to Randy Villegas!

Show your support with a contribution.

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Reposted by Mark Howard

Olivier Jutel 🇵🇸 @ojutel.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

I am very happy that my program is hosting @mrshoward.bsky.social in two weeks for a discussion of the role of contrarianism in the Silicon Valley founder/VC mythos. QR code for Zoom Deets

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

And so the FTC’s careers page has seemingly been deleted. That didn’t take long. It seems Silicon Valley’s cozying up to the incoming administration is already paying dividends. Prepare yourself for unprecedented monopolization and market manipulation.

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

One of my greatest dislikes about being an academic/writer is my ability to come up with perfect sentences (and sometimes even paragraphs) in the shower that I am somehow incapable of writing coherently 5 minutes later. Sigh.

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

Apparently Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI argues that latter violated antitrust law by asking investors not to back competitors. If he wins, this could all but make illegal a basic principle of VC investment: don’t spread your bets; monopoly FTW.

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

Axios reporting a second order boom in nuclear fusion tech investment to support the AI acceleration. No Roko’s basilisk for these VCs. Skynet thanks you.

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Reposted by Mark Howard

George Takei @georgetakei.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

We tried to warn. And yet the press “fact checked” anyone who dared to say Trump was going to implement Project 2025—because he said he wouldn’t. Insane.

Media Matters post about Project 2025 architect Russ Vought returning to lead the Office of Management and Budget. Vought is a leading proponent of using Schedule F to fire thousands of federal workers and replace them with MAGA loyalists.

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Reposted by Mark Howard

Paris Marx @parismarx.com · 19/11/2024

Silicon Valley is seizing the levers of power, but we’re here to help you chart a course through the madness. I’m thrilled to announce SYSTEM CRASH, a new podcast I’ll be cohosting with my pal @bcmerchant.bsky.social. Join us as we dissect the tech dystopia. Starts Friday!

System Crash. Hosted by Paris Marx and Brian Merchant. Starts Friday.

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

It’s still not clear to me who’s smarter, Musk or the AI. Guess It depends on whether X’s algorithm drives the man, or the man drives the algorithm.. fortune.com/2024/11/14/g...

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 27/09/2024

And so OpenAI is set to become the next Google. I wonder if it will take the US DoJ 27 years to figure out it’s a monopoly as well. www.linkedin.com/news/story/o...

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 25/05/2024

Map of undersea internet cables. Wow.

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 01/05/2024

TiL that you can buy ETFs tracking US congressional members’ stock trades. The democrat ETF is called “NANC” and the Republican one “KRUZ” 🤔 — both outperform the S&P 500 by a LOT. 🤔💡

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Reposted by Mark Howard

Existential Comics @existentialcomics.com · 30/04/2024

What's cool about looking back at the history of college protests is that 19 year old students have been right about every single American war, and the esteemed Harvard educated opinion writers at the New York Times have been wrong about every single American war.

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