Andreesen vs. introspection

In The Nation , David Futrelle writes about “Marc Andreessen’s Dangerously Unexamined Life.” Andreesen says that he is never or only rarely introspective, and that introspection is a fad, invented circa 1910: “If you go back, like, 400 years ago, it never would have occurred to anybody to be introspective.”

The frightening thing is that people who don’t know better will believe Andreessen, or at least take his words as permission to do what they wanna. They have a role model in the current occupant, who would likely be unable even to explain what introspection is.

[You can read the article without a subscription by using the reader view in your browser. I’d like to credit kottke.org, where I found this article, but that website is down now. An afterthought: Was Andreesen thinking of Virginia Woolf’s observation that “On or about December 1910, human character changed”? Or was he just pulling a year from his (big) head?]