Man if this actually starts to happen it's a good time to be a welder, concrete worker, or any general contractor or tradesman in Louisiana. Coastal Louisiana is some of the poorest areas in the US even more so than the valley in Texas where Starbase Texas is located. Probably 10-20 years worth of solid work building out that site.
swingandamiss · 2026-08-25 17:26:19 UTC
A lot of good, hard working people in that area that would love to have these jobs open up.
tl;dw -- louisiana has a ton of natural resources and wonderful harbors, but has allowed corporations to get away with almost anything without paying their fair share of taxes, cleaning up their waste, or generally being held accountable. And likely related, there is a long history of rampant corruption in the area. With sea levels rising and cancerous pollution filling densely populated areas, life in Louisiana has generally become very difficult :(
gammarator · 2026-08-25 18:57:55 UTC
The book “Strangers in Their Own Land” covers similar ground.
pstuart · 2026-08-25 19:04:05 UTC
> but has allowed corporations to get away with almost anything without paying their fair share of taxes
No doubt one of the more compelling reasons for SpaceX to do it there (along with their given reasoning).
jpleyden98 · 2026-08-25 19:04:08 UTC
I haven't had time to watch the video but my understanding was a lot of the Louisiana coast have big problems with rising sea levels and much of it in the process of falling underwater. Perhaps it's relatively trivial to reinforce the coast for the forseeable I don't know.
The plans for the site involve extracting significant amounts of natural gas to make methane to burn for the rocket fuel. If they hit the launch levels they suggest (thousands of launches per year), this is not a small amount of greenhouse gases they'll be emitting which of course helps accelerate melting of the ice caps and rising sea levels, which could threaten the very site they've built it on.
timschmidt · 2026-08-25 20:08:59 UTC
They're also the folks working on the largest co2 -> methane converters in the world. Because that's how they'll need to make fuel on Mars, and no one else on earth wants to fund an expensive technology to replace an inexpensive gas pumped from the ground. By definition, these reactors will have to be capable of producing enough fuel for a rocket in order to be fit for purpose. That opens the door for carbon neutral operation. It's tough to imagine a greener rocket than a fully reusable one that's carbon neutral running on methane. Sure beats spewing hypergolics or solid rocket fuels.
tantalor · 2026-08-25 19:26:04 UTC
Reminds me of Africa in terms of resource exploitation and lack of re-investment.
gchamonlive · 2026-08-25 18:55:02 UTC
What are the chances they'll employ cheap labor they can just use as election fodder for stealing hard-working american jobs?
Either that or pay decent wages for American workers that'll drive up construction prices and worsen the inflation which is already crazy due to these criminal tariffs.
timschmidt · 2026-08-25 20:09:56 UTC
ITAR requires them to employ US citizens.
rayiner · 2026-08-25 21:06:49 UTC
ITAR proves it’s possible to have immigration enforcement.
throwaway2037 · 2026-08-27 01:27:29 UTC
To be clear, ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) restricts certain roles to "US persons". This is a weird term in US immigration/nationality law. A permanent resident (green-card holder) is classified as a "US person". As a result, SpaceX can employ non-US citizens for ITAR regulated roles.
inemesitaffia · 2026-08-27 11:16:00 UTC
SpaceX avoids hiring foreigners . Just like some companies/facilities only hire cleared people. Even though it may not be required.
jtbayly · 2026-08-25 21:14:18 UTC
So no matter what they do, you blame them? If they pay not enough, they are bad, if they pay enough, they are also bad. Ok.
gchamonlive · 2026-08-25 21:18:14 UTC
They put themselves in that situation, the US admin, not me. I'm just commenting. Or is any of what I said wrong? I mean there's something called ITAR that requires American workers, but that doesn't mean the impact on inflation isn't real
WalterBright · 2026-08-25 21:39:41 UTC
Inflation is caused by deficit money creation. It is not caused by taxes, tariffs, corporate greed, union greed, oligarchs, or anything else.
gchamonlive · 2026-08-25 21:45:46 UTC
That's a very narrow view of inflation. If you increase wages, there's more demand for goods, more demand means higher prices which means higher inflation. Same with tariffs, they are paid when importing goods, which is passed onto the consumer, resulting in higher prices and thus inflation.
consensus1 · 2026-08-25 21:55:10 UTC
And where did that money to increase wages come from?
gchamonlive · 2026-08-26 12:10:10 UTC
Which money? The real money comes from the working class that make the world run, if it's manual labor, creative labor or managerial. The fake money comes from speculation.
WalterBright · 2026-08-25 22:16:59 UTC
> That's a very narrow view of inflation.
It's the only correct one. For proof, consider the inflation that happened when Spain looted gold from S. America, then during the California Gold Rush, then the Yukon Gold Rush.
All driven by an increase in the supply of money.
gchamonlive · 2026-08-26 11:36:00 UTC
So you are applying economic dynamics from the... gold rush to the modern era? You do realise gold isn't the base value for dollar since 1933 at least.
dgellow · 2026-08-25 21:48:19 UTC
That’s a very, very narrow definition of inflation
sigmoid10 · 2026-08-25 17:58:02 UTC
If the figures in this announcement hold up, they're gonna spend like $20k per resident of LA. That's insane.
ryandvm · 2026-08-25 18:38:01 UTC
Lol. I can't imaging the figures from a Musk venture not holding up.
maxlin · 2026-08-25 22:26:27 UTC
Many said that about Starlink too. Impossible to send so many rockets up. Till it isn't.
Did you watch the video? This person didn't say it was impossible to launch enough satellites for Starlink.
He said the Falcon 1 launch price of $5MM was unrealistic, which ended up being correct. At the time, Falcon 1 was supposed to launch 600kg for $5MM. It ended up launching 420kg for $9MM. $8k/kg to $21k/kg.
Now obviously there's always a lot of doubt and skepticism around SpaceX, but you can just say "people said this would be really hard but they did it." Or you can say "Musk set a goal to 4x performance and got to an also-remarkable 3x" or whatever.
Even in this video, the smug Ariane guy heaps a decent amount of praise upon SpaceX and what they've achieved. He just said a $5MM launch will not be one of those things, and he was correct.
TMWNN · 2026-08-26 17:20:59 UTC
>Did you watch the video?
Yes, thus my posting it.
His underlying tone is that reusability is "a dream" (his words). Without reusability, Starlink as a network of tens of thousands of satellites would not be practical.
He said this in 2013, two years before the first Falcon 9 booster landing.
estearum · 2026-08-26 17:52:03 UTC
Calling reusability "a dream" is different from saying "Starlink is impossible."
You can try to read the tea leaves on tone and some creative interpretation of implicature (despite Starlink actually needing fewer than 1000 satellites for its public launch), but they're different claims.
Not sure why there's a need to exaggerate the victimhood of SpaceX lol, super strange.
The Ariane guy was quite clear about what he thought was practical and not. He said $5MM launch won't happen (it didn't). He said reusability is a dream (he was wrong). He said nothing about the impossibility of Starlink, either implicitly or explicitly.
inemesitaffia · 2026-08-27 11:19:46 UTC
Without reusability, SpaceX wouldn't achieve profitability in its connectivity segment.
Especially not by 2024
estearum · 2026-08-27 12:46:22 UTC
Maybe so, but that wasn't the claim the Ariane guy was making at all.
I guess I assumed you meant "people who should have a pretty good idea said it was impossible" since that could be interesting, and not "a random person on the Internet said X", since that's not interesting for any value of X.
inemesitaffia · 2026-08-27 11:18:34 UTC
It's not particularly hard to find other ones.
Add one more and it's people.
estearum · 2026-08-27 12:46:05 UTC
Oh sure, I bet you can find plenty of random people on the Internet who said it's impossible.
You can also find plenty of people on the Internet who say that humanoid reptiles live in the earth's core.
Is either one interesting when/if they're wrong?
whyage · 2026-08-25 18:15:14 UTC
Are "3,000 new jobs" enough to make a dent though?
chasd00 · 2026-08-25 18:21:47 UTC
it doesn't fix everything wrong in the state but it's > 0. There's a lot of additional economic activity that comes with the construction too. Restaurants get busier, Walmart gets busier, lots of auto repair/servicing will be needed etc. Som e people will move for construction and end up staying there. It can be a shock to the local communities though but i think the positives still outweigh the negatives.
rtkwe · 2026-08-25 18:34:49 UTC
The biggest issue is these kinds of construction jobs are temporary. It's similar to but not quite as bad as datacenters where you get a very short term influx of skilled highly paid labor but those jobs don't stick around after the construction is over. Starbase will require more people on site at least.
chasd00 · 2026-08-25 19:00:09 UTC
yeah but that site is huge, that's a multi-decade construction project.
oceanplexian · 2026-08-25 20:29:40 UTC
The construction is temporary but what are the economic impacts of having a fully operational spaceport that launches 20,000% more tonnage to orbit than the Florida Space Coast?
Probably a great deal of long term economic impact.
Noaidi · 2026-08-25 21:47:09 UTC
You mean the negative economic impacts?
vel0city · 2026-08-26 00:37:28 UTC
One would think the same thing about having some of the biggest chemical manufacturing and refining industries around and yet the people of Louisiana are some of the poorest in the US.
Tons of money flowing through the state. Just to a select few people who own the plants for the most part, not for the people working there day to day. I don't see why one would think that would change.
sixothree · 2026-08-26 05:41:07 UTC
My friend. If you know anything about Louisiana and their current government is that the people are there to be exploited. This is not going to help the people of the area at all.
consensus1 · 2026-08-25 22:00:10 UTC
The whole "temporary jobs" line is completely irrelevant nonsense. Sure, it's correct, but who cares? The alternative is zero. It's not like there is only a limited amount of undeveloped land and a bunch of people bidding for it. And of course those jobs don't stick around after construction is over. They're construction workers. They move on to the the next construction job.
protocolture · 2026-08-26 01:07:15 UTC
>It's similar to but not quite as bad as datacenters where you get a very short term influx of skilled highly paid labor but those jobs don't stick around after the construction is over.
The issue with Datacentres is that you cant model the advantage of lower colo costs on jobs in the area.
The problem is that some people dont want to permit anything unless they can measure the benefits, when the market doesnt always work like that.
jayGlow · 2026-08-26 02:39:41 UTC
aren't literally all construction jobs temporary? once something is finished you usually stop construction.
dopa42365 · 2026-08-25 19:42:27 UTC
Sounds like "legal language" threshold for whatever reason? The Terafab announcement used the same phrase:
>The initial phase of Terafab is estimated to require approximately $16.8 billion in capital investments from SpaceX and Tesla, with potential future expansion phases bringing total investment much higher. This facility will employ at least 3,000 people, many of whom will be from Grimes and nearby Brazos County — continuing the trend of our other Texas sites where between 60% and 80% of new hires are local residents.
That Starbase concept (not that the numbers are realistic by any means) is orders of magnitude more ambitious than what SpaceX does today with 22k employees.
jrrv · 2026-08-25 19:56:34 UTC
> many of whom will be from Grimes
That required a double take
mrtksn · 2026-08-25 18:59:06 UTC
Unless of course Musk decides to use the opportunity to advertise Optimus, be it with actually AI able to do it or teleoperator do it.
VanTheBrand · 2026-08-25 19:00:42 UTC
Optimus would have to work well enough in the near future for that not gonna happen
nodesocket · 2026-08-25 21:27:36 UTC
Optimus ins’t gonna be a master welder, electrician, HVAC technician, general contractor anytime soon.
bdamm · 2026-08-26 01:18:34 UTC
Debatable. Optimus will be programmed by watching thousands of YouTube videos and by indexing the entire NEC. It is entirely possible that a single Optimus can be a master welder, electrician, and HVAC technician. What Optimus can't do is take responsibility for the completion of the work as being done to code. Nor is it clear how much Optimus will cost to buy or operate.
Underestimating humanoid capabilities is a mistake; the real challenge will be the economics and the flow of responsibility. But imagine a future where every structure built has a pov video documenting its construction. I don't like the implication for the trades any more than I like the implication of Claude for putting me out of work either.
dmitriy_ko · 2026-08-26 02:21:48 UTC
Latest LLMs that have good visual understanding (Gemini and GPT) are able to tell if construction work is up to code. You can give it a picture of electrical wiring, plumbing, framing and it will tell you if it's up to code with very good accuracy.
imtringued · 2026-08-27 09:30:00 UTC
Ok, but if you think that's true, then it would be a huge mistake to put Optimus on two legs instead of a boom lift.
WalterBright · 2026-08-25 21:41:59 UTC
I'm skeptical that Optimus can be productive at anything other than picking up boxes, moving them around, then stacking them.
dgellow · 2026-08-25 21:50:21 UTC
Won’t stop him from advertising them
WalterBright · 2026-08-25 22:20:18 UTC
Nope, it won't. Won't stop the government from advertising the failed California high speed rail, either. But I think Musk is more likely to deliver on Optimus.
While workers are rarely paid up front, two week pay interval is pretty common
bix6 · 2026-08-25 20:40:09 UTC
did we read the same article? The link above says nothing about pay period but does list hundreds of millions unpaid.
fastball · 2026-08-25 20:42:23 UTC
hundreds of millions unpaid and zero investigative journalism to try to get at the truth, besides "liens filed therefore Elon Musk is a cheapskate".
bix6 · 2026-08-25 21:20:51 UTC
So you think multiple contractors in multiple states are just filing liens for fun?
s1artibartfast · 2026-08-25 23:15:13 UTC
Anything at scale will have payment disputes. Did the work happen, was it for contract, did it run over? These types of questions are extremely common
bix6 · 2026-08-26 02:36:55 UTC
Right so the article says they aren’t paying but should be. Do you have evidence to suggest otherwise?
fastball · 2026-08-26 20:58:59 UTC
The problem is that neither you nor I have evidence that says they should be paying, either.
s1artibartfast · 2026-08-27 00:43:07 UTC
The article reports that one party in a dispute says they should be paid.
SpaceX also has also filed a lawsuit against them claiming 5-800 million in damages for fraudulent billing and contract violations, and has made their own statements.
Does that count as evidence?
kurthr · 2026-08-25 20:46:12 UTC
Contractors are commonly net30/net60/net90 or paid on completion and inspection of work done. This isn't a union job with biweekly paychecks.
s1artibartfast · 2026-08-25 23:13:00 UTC
You think SpaceX is shopping out their infrastructure to individual contractors?
thegrim33 · 2026-08-25 20:38:16 UTC
It's so interesting to me that the whole "futurism" concept got co-opted into some sort of political propaganda machine. All the articles are negative hit pieces, they're all reductive, they're almost all political in nature. I used to go on the futurism subreddit years ago and it's all the same there. You'd think "futurism" would be about .. promoting new technology, ushering in the future, you know .. futurism. Not just another political propaganda outlet.
jubilanti · 2026-08-25 20:47:39 UTC
Futurism is a focus on the future. The future may be good or bad. Your desire to focus only on the upsides (for you) and not want to hear about the consequences, externalities, or dangers is one of the most "political" positions a technologist can have.
Do you hate reading most science fiction? Because the ratio of dystopic to utopic scifi is pretty unbalanced.
kulahan · 2026-08-25 21:20:51 UTC
You could just say “no” - it would save a lot of space, be about as polite, and way less annoying.
Sometimes people want to talk about science stuff without talking about human fallout and political implications. It’s perfectly fine to want an occasional break from those types of discussions.
ryandrake · 2026-08-25 22:03:22 UTC
Talking about "science stuff" without even mentioning the political and human implications is pointlessly incomplete. It's like trying to talk about a programming language without mentioning variables.
Everything is human and everything is political. To pretend that it is not is, in itself, a political stance.
kulahan · 2026-08-25 22:31:01 UTC
Let's take the two pieces you put out there and just look at logical conclusions., because it's kinda hilarious to imagine you actually hold this actually-insane position.
1. Everything is political
2. Talking about something without mentioning political and human implications is "pointlessly incomplete"
Topic: "Anyone wanna go swimming?"
Normal people: "Sure."
You, apparently: "Are you aware of how water is unequally distributed throughout the world? How can we possibly discuss swimming if we aren't willing to discuss the political fallout? This is pointlessly incomplete."
Next panel, you're just researching local water table rights while everyone else is swimming and having fun
thrance · 2026-08-26 02:39:29 UTC
Nice strawman.
kulahan · 2026-08-26 04:06:32 UTC
Nope, just showing how ridiculous it is to hold the position that everything is political. It's okay to just talk about things casually, dude. Chill out, it'll serve you well.
If your position isn't that everything is political, don't say it is. If it is your position, this is perfectly in line with what you stated.
thrance · 2026-08-26 11:36:50 UTC
Your strawman didn't show anything, except that you're unwilling to engage with other viewpoints in good faith and will immediately dismiss them as ridiculous instead of advancing actual arguments.
Why should we be silent over the obvious political aspects of giving Musk more government contracts? Just to please you?
kulahan · 2026-08-26 21:53:09 UTC
Why should you be silent about it? Because it’s not the topic. How is this SOOOO confusing and difficult for you? Do you not notice how annoyed everyone around you is when you desperately try to ram politics into every single conversation you have in life?
Oh, you don’t really do that? You’re just being performative online?
Got it.
thrance · 2026-08-27 11:21:34 UTC
Just say you agree with everything Musk does and be done with it, damn. No need to hide behind this disingenuous "no politics pls".
kulahan · 2026-08-27 20:55:23 UTC
Musk is one of the dumbest motherfuckers on Earth buddy. Just say you have no real argument and you're just upset at some strawman you thought you were conversing with.
throwaway173738 · 2026-08-26 12:38:37 UTC
This is pretty contrived. Politics is as simple as “Janey and I really want to swim in the ocean” vs “I wanted to go to the lake by my house.” The politics are how that conflict gets resolved peacefully.
ralfd · 2026-08-25 21:26:11 UTC
That is a modern phenomena though. Classic scifi was optimistic and utopian. But today even Star Trek has to be bleak/gritty/depressing.
sharkjacobs · 2026-08-25 21:42:36 UTC
> Classic scifi was optimistic and utopian
Yeah for sure, science fiction used to be optimistic and utopian, like Planet of the Apes, Brave New World, Frankenstein, 1984, Earth Abides, The Martian Chronicles, A Canticle for Leibowitz, The Time Machine, War of the Worlds, and Island of Dr Moreau, We, Farenheit 451 ...
dgellow · 2026-08-25 21:46:44 UTC
Forgot about We, I love that book
bodge5000 · 2026-08-25 21:51:48 UTC
Great to see Island of Dr Moreau mentioned, people often forget about that but its one of my favourite books
bodge5000 · 2026-08-25 21:43:55 UTC
Classic sci-fi was far from universally optimistic, it had more optimistic pieces than we do today but I'd still say on the whole it was more dystopia than utopia. Even for its own time, the original Star Trek was considered uniquely optimistic, though a large part of that is that its just much easier to write a good story where the setting itself provides the necessary challenges for a story to work, rather than an optimistic setting which rules out a lot of the usual challenges. Even Star Trek struggled, a good chunk of its stories are about encountering a race or civilisation without that utopia, turns out telling a good story without any conflict is pretty tough, especially a long running one.
But it does more generally reflect how society views technology as a whole too. People are generally a lot more pessimistic about new tech now, myself included, we've seen time and time again how its used to control or squeeze us. There actually was a Star Trek episode, "The Game" (season 5, episode 6) about an addicting device you could compare to smartphones (though the device in Star Trek doesn't spy on you to sell your every move to advertisers, missed a trick there), and that certainly wasn't supposed to be an optimistic look at technology, so you can see why things have gone the way they have.
dgellow · 2026-08-25 21:45:49 UTC
You mean like Dune, the Neuromancer, Bladerunner, the Time Machine?
modeless · 2026-08-25 21:34:33 UTC
Yeah, I hate modern science fiction. It's almost all terrible. Sci-fi written in the time of actual ongoing world wars and the Cold War's constant threat of instant nuclear annihilation was far more optimistic, and far more imaginative.
Comments
tl;dw -- louisiana has a ton of natural resources and wonderful harbors, but has allowed corporations to get away with almost anything without paying their fair share of taxes, cleaning up their waste, or generally being held accountable. And likely related, there is a long history of rampant corruption in the area. With sea levels rising and cancerous pollution filling densely populated areas, life in Louisiana has generally become very difficult :(
No doubt one of the more compelling reasons for SpaceX to do it there (along with their given reasoning).
The plans for the site involve extracting significant amounts of natural gas to make methane to burn for the rocket fuel. If they hit the launch levels they suggest (thousands of launches per year), this is not a small amount of greenhouse gases they'll be emitting which of course helps accelerate melting of the ice caps and rising sea levels, which could threaten the very site they've built it on.
Either that or pay decent wages for American workers that'll drive up construction prices and worsen the inflation which is already crazy due to these criminal tariffs.
It's the only correct one. For proof, consider the inflation that happened when Spain looted gold from S. America, then during the California Gold Rush, then the Yukon Gold Rush.
All driven by an increase in the supply of money.
He said the Falcon 1 launch price of $5MM was unrealistic, which ended up being correct. At the time, Falcon 1 was supposed to launch 600kg for $5MM. It ended up launching 420kg for $9MM. $8k/kg to $21k/kg.
Now obviously there's always a lot of doubt and skepticism around SpaceX, but you can just say "people said this would be really hard but they did it." Or you can say "Musk set a goal to 4x performance and got to an also-remarkable 3x" or whatever.
Even in this video, the smug Ariane guy heaps a decent amount of praise upon SpaceX and what they've achieved. He just said a $5MM launch will not be one of those things, and he was correct.
Yes, thus my posting it.
His underlying tone is that reusability is "a dream" (his words). Without reusability, Starlink as a network of tens of thousands of satellites would not be practical.
He said this in 2013, two years before the first Falcon 9 booster landing.
You can try to read the tea leaves on tone and some creative interpretation of implicature (despite Starlink actually needing fewer than 1000 satellites for its public launch), but they're different claims.
Not sure why there's a need to exaggerate the victimhood of SpaceX lol, super strange.
The Ariane guy was quite clear about what he thought was practical and not. He said $5MM launch won't happen (it didn't). He said reusability is a dream (he was wrong). He said nothing about the impossibility of Starlink, either implicitly or explicitly.
Especially not by 2024
I guess I assumed you meant "people who should have a pretty good idea said it was impossible" since that could be interesting, and not "a random person on the Internet said X", since that's not interesting for any value of X.
Add one more and it's people.
You can also find plenty of people on the Internet who say that humanoid reptiles live in the earth's core.
Is either one interesting when/if they're wrong?
Probably a great deal of long term economic impact.
Tons of money flowing through the state. Just to a select few people who own the plants for the most part, not for the people working there day to day. I don't see why one would think that would change.
The issue with Datacentres is that you cant model the advantage of lower colo costs on jobs in the area.
The problem is that some people dont want to permit anything unless they can measure the benefits, when the market doesnt always work like that.
>The initial phase of Terafab is estimated to require approximately $16.8 billion in capital investments from SpaceX and Tesla, with potential future expansion phases bringing total investment much higher. This facility will employ at least 3,000 people, many of whom will be from Grimes and nearby Brazos County — continuing the trend of our other Texas sites where between 60% and 80% of new hires are local residents.
https://www.spacex.com/updates#terafab
That Starbase concept (not that the numbers are realistic by any means) is orders of magnitude more ambitious than what SpaceX does today with 22k employees.
That required a double take
Underestimating humanoid capabilities is a mistake; the real challenge will be the economics and the flow of responsibility. But imagine a future where every structure built has a pov video documenting its construction. I don't like the implication for the trades any more than I like the implication of Claude for putting me out of work either.
SpaceX also has also filed a lawsuit against them claiming 5-800 million in damages for fraudulent billing and contract violations, and has made their own statements.
Does that count as evidence?
Do you hate reading most science fiction? Because the ratio of dystopic to utopic scifi is pretty unbalanced.
Sometimes people want to talk about science stuff without talking about human fallout and political implications. It’s perfectly fine to want an occasional break from those types of discussions.
Everything is human and everything is political. To pretend that it is not is, in itself, a political stance.
1. Everything is political
2. Talking about something without mentioning political and human implications is "pointlessly incomplete"
Topic: "Anyone wanna go swimming?"
Normal people: "Sure."
You, apparently: "Are you aware of how water is unequally distributed throughout the world? How can we possibly discuss swimming if we aren't willing to discuss the political fallout? This is pointlessly incomplete."
Next panel, you're just researching local water table rights while everyone else is swimming and having fun
If your position isn't that everything is political, don't say it is. If it is your position, this is perfectly in line with what you stated.
Why should we be silent over the obvious political aspects of giving Musk more government contracts? Just to please you?
Oh, you don’t really do that? You’re just being performative online?
Got it.
Yeah for sure, science fiction used to be optimistic and utopian, like Planet of the Apes, Brave New World, Frankenstein, 1984, Earth Abides, The Martian Chronicles, A Canticle for Leibowitz, The Time Machine, War of the Worlds, and Island of Dr Moreau, We, Farenheit 451 ...
But it does more generally reflect how society views technology as a whole too. People are generally a lot more pessimistic about new tech now, myself included, we've seen time and time again how its used to control or squeeze us. There actually was a Star Trek episode, "The Game" (season 5, episode 6) about an addicting device you could compare to smartphones (though the device in Star Trek doesn't spy on you to sell your every move to advertisers, missed a trick there), and that certainly wasn't supposed to be an optimistic look at technology, so you can see why things have gone the way they have.
It's on sale now :).