This post, and three more to come, aim to document a fascinating informal email discussion with Petri Mähönen in September 2020 about mythological ways of thinking about tech entrepreneurs and their companies. This was part of the on-going Tech & Myth project (see e.g. tech gods: Dec 2018, Jan 2019; project summaries: Jul 2020, Oct 2020). Massive thanks to Petri, and apologies for places where my paraphrases misunderstood or misrepresented him.
In the first post, I look at American digital entrepreneurs in the light of Nietzsche’s Apollo-Dionysus axis.
Mythology & the tech industry: Overview of a four-part series
My conversation with Petri covered a lot of ground in the intersection between digital technology and mythology. This series of posts records a variety of insights and speculations, rather than making a case for firm conclusions. They’re something of a mixed bag, but I believe the ideas are worth cataloging. Roughly speaking, the first two posts focus on the technology side, exploring the mythical aspects of entrepreneurs and companies, while the second two start with mythology and dig into whether and how various ancient gods can shed light on technology.
My hypothesis is that the most powerful innovators (people, companies, or technologies) are Nietzschean blends of Dionysus and Apollo, particularly if one sees Apollo as the muse of engineers, even if not an engineer himself. And since disruptive change is Trickster’s hallmark, it’s no surprise that Loki’s involved. This first post will test the hypothesis against several digital entrepreneurs. Elon Musk and Steve Jobs line up reasonably well with the Dionysus-Loki combination. Some entrepreneurs also show Apollo. Petri suspects that Loki’s shapeshifting might make Dionysus behave like Apollo.
Part 2 will look at Apollo-Dionysus dynamics between leaders and their companies, and between different companies. In Part 3 we add some female-gendered deities to the mix. We focus on Athena, and then consider several primordial goddesses including those representing Fate and Chance. Part 4 wraps up the discussion by considering Hephaestus and a few more gods, and tries to tie several of the deities we discussed into interlocking networks.
Musk beyond Dionysus
Reading Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy got me thinking about Apollo and (especially) Dionysus. In the project up to then, I had failed to find the tricksters I was expecting among tech entrepreneurs. Even Elon Musk didn’t quite fit the Trickster mold, and looking at him through the Nietzschean lens I saw a lot of Dionysus, and some Apollo too. This got me speculating that breakthrough innovators, like sublime plays, integrate Apollo and Dionysus.
Petri pointed out that one can interpret Musk mythologically in two ways. In one interpretation, he’s predominantly Loki, and Dionysus is one of his disguises. This would account for his controversial behavior. On another account, though, Musk could be primarily Dionysus, who becomes a trickster during rebirths and intoxications. I agree that Musk seems to be a hybrid of Dionysus and Loki. On the trickster side, he certainly ticks the Disrupter box, though I don’t see a lot of evidence that he’s more of a callous manipulator than any other entrepreneur.
Petri also noted that Loki and Dionysus belong to different mythological traditions, and that Loki is one of the Norse deities who does not have an exact match in Greek (or Roman) mythology. The closest is the mischievous Hermes (Mercury), the patron of commerce, communications, thieves, and divination. It seems to me that Loki, Dionysus, and Hermes are similar in that they stand outside the traditional social order (although both Greek gods became Olympians, while Loki was an outsider to the end).
Petri leaned towards disagreeing with the claim that Musk also has elements of Apollo. He contends that Musk’s Dionysus-Loki is good for “tricking” scientists and other Apollonian thinkers to join his bandwagon. As someone who loves to throw a party, maximize enjoyment, etc., Musk can be a muse for those great engineers — in the frenzy of the bacchanal, they produce some of their best work.
While he may be right about Musk the individual doesn’t have Apollo, I think one can make a good case that the companies he created have integrated Apollo and Dionysus. More generally, I speculate (following Nietzsche) that successful tech always does that: synthesizing reason and passion.
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| Dave Mosher/Insider, via Business Insider Australia |
Steve Jobs
Looking around for other Apollo-Dionysus examples, Steve Jobs came to mind.
Jobs was certainly theatrical: all those exquisitely choreographed product launches, and the Reality Distortion Field. People who’ve had even brief encounters with him report feeling an aura that was almost mythically strong. Being fired from Apple and then returning in triumph is certainly a “dying into life” like that of Dionysus. He had a temper. (But then, don’t all of them?) Last but not least, Apple’s goal was to delight customers. That checks many of Dionysus boxes, described by theoi.com as “the Olympian god of wine, vegetation, pleasure, festivity, madness and wild frenzy.”
On the other hand, Jobs’s design sensibility, and Apple’s engineering, was Apollonian in its purity and clarity. Apple’s affinity with the creative and design communities resonates with Apollo as the presiding deity of music, song, dance, and poetry.
There seems to be less of Loki in Jobs than in Musk, at least on a personal level. However, Petri points out that the whiff of Loki in Jobs arises from his being a shapeshifter. Jobs, he says, was incredibly good at reading an audience and even individual people, and then shifting his distortion field to work optimally for the intended audience. He could shift from being the most reasonable Apollonian to a screaming Hades in a fraction of a second. Petri notes that, judging by stories from senior management, there were completely different Steves at Apple and Pixar. At Apple he was willing to micromanage in quite a dictatorial way; very much Dionysus selecting the best wines. At Pixar he played the role of Apollonian guru, who just wanted to help people to succeed: much less bad temper and hands-on micromanagement – but still very much Dionysus in the sense that he wanted to entertain. It’s pretty certain he would have exploded if Pixar’s movies and software were not as good as they were.
Petri agrees that the “Dionysus with some Loki” concept could work quite well for Jobs. Most of the clean product design, and the ability to combine the best design and engineering to create a product that just worked came, at least initially, coming from him. He was able to use his Dionysus personality to gather the very best designers and engineers together.
Jobs also has a touch of “Apollo the Oracle,” though for Petri it wasn’t necessarily technological foresight, but rather a sense of what people would like. He built an incredible team to try out all kinds of technological ideas, and he was notoriously good at throwing a prototype back to the engineers and designers, telling them that it was no good. He had an uncanny knack for recognizing when something worked, betting heavily that he was right, and marketing it successfully.
Petri concedes that Apple, at least in its golden years with Jobs, was a combination of Dionysus and Apollo. Jobs saw even software decisions not as pure engineering questions, but an issue of “taste”; he had an uncanny sense of how a purely technical issue might affect the design, and created a corporate culture of small code objects.
Bill Gates
Just like Jobs, Bill Gates also dropped out of college, which one could interpret as a Dionysian death/rebirth. However, Bill’s business career didn’t have any rebirths, although his transformation into a philanthropist has been striking. He had furious temper, and his constant rocking in meetings remind me of a suppressed Dionysian frenzy. (Bill’s impatience is not necessarily a sign of the Dionysian, though; any god is easily enraged if things don’t go their way.) On the other hand, his creations aren’t Apollonian. Microsoft products have always been on the messy, satisficing side of things – and without the passion of Dionysus. Still, Bill was very cerebral, which one could interpret as Apollonian. Bottom line: the case that Gates combined Dionysus and Apollo isn’t as convincing as it is for Jobs.
Petri floated the idea the Bill is strongly Apollonian, though not really in products: he is just interested in building an empire. (A technology empire, to be sure, but the empire seemed more important than the tech.) The products were just tools for achieving that. He has some Dionysus, as I certainly observed the controlled rage and frenzy to reach those goals. But this Dionysus is a weaker part of the duality, as he is not interested in throwing a great party, and does not care about enjoyable products, as Steve Jobs did. There is little or no Loki in him, in contrast to Jobs and Musk.
Other tech leaders
Petri suggested I consider Larry Ellison. He’s occurred to me several times over the last year, but my thinking keeps glancing off him – a sign of Trickster at work?
Ellison certainly has a bad-boy persona that smacks of Dionysus. He’s described as a jet-setting billionaire and international playboy; the trappings include yacht racing, a 23-acre Silicon Valley mansion resembling a shogun’s castle, buying a Hawaiian island, and four divorces (Business Insider). He’s a consummate salesman (the first version of the Oracle database was Version 2; there was no Version 1) and he’s more than willing to trash-talk his competitors. There’s nothing that seems Apollonian; perhaps that’s in his company (see Part 2).
Mark Zuckerberg certainly doesn’t remind me of Dionysus, or Trickster; if anything, he’s Apollo – or perhaps one of Hephaestus’s automata. Jeff Bezos is an enigma, probably intentionally; he reminds me more of Odin than Loki. Bad boy entrepreneurs like Travis Kalanick and Elizabeth Holmes, are Dionysian to the extent that Dionysus is the ultimate Bad Boy – but with a good dose of Trickster.
Petri has also suggested Jim Clark (the co-founder of Silicon Graphics and Netscape, among others). He’s more Apollo than Dionysus. While Clark dropped out of high school, he eventually earned a PhD in computer science, and became a professor at Stanford before founding Silicon Graphics. Like Ellison, though, he has also been married four times, and has a penchant for expensive yachts.
All the posts in the Techies & Myth series
- Part 1: Apollo, Dionysus, and the Entrepreneurs
- Part 2: Mythical entrepreneurs
- Part 3: Goddesses and Tech
- Part 4: More Gods as Tech
Update, Oct 2020
- Added links to other posts in the series
- Added Oct 2020 project snapshot
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