The Unbearable Softness Of Softbank
Japanese telecom company Softbank has been making headlines recently for the mountain of capital it has raised and is now deploying in the tech sector. Fortune’s Polina Marinova gives some insight into Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son’s strategy beyond making it rain billions on struggling unicorns, by analyzing a Softbank “Next 30 Years Vision” deck from 2010.
On a conceptual level, the deck posits an eventual “information revolution” catalyzed by sensors and data, and argues that computing power (which is defined as ‘cell’ versus ‘transistor’ count) will surpass human brain power in 2018. As far as I can tell, that prediction will not pan out.
On a deeper level, it would seem like the person who designed this deck was a closet Existentialist, painstakingly questioning the very meaning of life through liberal use of the PowerPoint Clip Art library.
As the dystopian future the deck predicts seems ever more plausible in 2017, the poignancy of the deck’s image and text juxtapositions make the heart ache with ontological angst. “Why are we here?” “Are we in control of our lives?” “Why is Donald Trump president?” “Why is it called Softbank if it’s not a bank?”
Because the universe is absurd, and we make our own meanings in life, here are the most wistful slides in the Softbank deck, paired with a quote from some of the greatest Existentialist thinkers of our time. Philosophical wax on, philosophical wax off.
1. “What is life but an unpleasant interruption to a peaceful nonexistence?” John Paul Sartre
2. “The worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caverns and forests.” Friedrich Nietzche
3. “Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman–a rope over an abyss.” Frederich Nietzche
4. “If we believe in nothing, if nothing has any meaning and if we can affirm no values whatsoever, then everything is possible and nothing has any importance.” Albert Camus
5. “After awhile you could get used to anything.” Albert Camus
6. “Hell is other people.” Jean Paul Sartre
7. “The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.” Carl Sagan
8. “People run from rain but sit in bathtubs full of water.” Charles Bukowski
9. “Did she love you?”
“Only as an extension of herself.”
“What else can love be?” Charles Bukowski
10. “There is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock.” Charles Bukowski
11. “Why are there beings at all, instead of Nothing?” Martin Heidegger
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