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Uncanny Valley

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Re: Uncanny Valley

#41

Post by altotrees »

Really well-written piece. Someone else mentioned Brett Easton-Ellis in this thread, and I totally got that vibe from the early paragraphs on.

What really got me though, was thinking about my earliest days building small Beavis and Butthead fan sites on Geocities, browsing Netscape for hours and waiting five minutes for a certain page to finally load. I was only 12 then, but everything just felt so new and shiny, and as someone else said like it could and would change the world.

Having now lived around and worked in tech for a while, stories like these make me feel a bit like I have been punched in the gut. It just seems negative and gross, but in a really captivating way. I connect with what the writer is saying, but also still get butterflies in my stomach when I think back to the 90's and my earliest exposure to startups and internet use.

At any rate, just me rambling. Well-done and insightful, I would read an entire novel like this.

Re: Uncanny Valley

#43

Post by pcmaffey »

We used to be adults when we left home for college or a job. Then, college became an extension of our youth... Now, that's not enough either. We need our jobs to be our next day care...

We're growing up slower. It's not a problem, so long as we're equipped as a society for longer maturation cycles, longer lifetimes, etc. The real world always finds its way in.

Better to accept the new paradigm, call it what it is, and adapt accordingly, than to judge.

Anna's story would make a great movie, btw.

Re: Uncanny Valley

#44

Post by kough »

altotrees wrote: post #41

Really well-written piece. Someone else mentioned Brett Easton-Ellis in this thread, and I totally got that vibe from the early paragraphs on. What really got me though, was thinking about my earliest days building small Beavis and Butthead fan sites on Geocities, browsing Netscape for hours and waiting five minutes for a certain page to finally load. I was only 12 then, but everything just felt so new and shiny, and…

Now picture someone not quite as old as you, who missed that first wave of internet excitement. They've never had that excitement, and they're the ones graduating college and going west now. I went out straight after high school, moved from the East Coast, did my tour of duty. It's weird because at that age I had no idea what kind of life I might want to live; what kind of lives were even available to live, really. And I didn't have the same dreams you may have had, definitely not the same inspirations.

All the aspects of the OP's writing that hit me like a gut punch now were absolutely bog standard to me. Only once I'd left (largely due to depression and burnout) did I realize how far that life is from the life I want to live.

Re: Uncanny Valley

#46

Post by rotskoff »

I think what I like best about this piece is the way in which it emphasizes the cultural homogeneity of Silicon Valley and the tension that enjoying and benefiting from that culture creates. It's absurd that each of these companies present itself as radical, creative, and free-thinking, when it's just another start-up with standing desks and Nerf guns lying around. Even the snack selection is stereotypical "the requisite wholesale box of assorted Clif Bars."

At the same time, the more relaxed, casual, and less hierarchical corporate structures that these companies have adopted can be very rewarding. While they haven't yet nailed the work-life balance considerations for many employees, more comfortable environments may end up fostering more productive, more inclusive teams (albeit there's a long way to go w/r/t diversity in tech) [1].

Just a plug: I've been a subscriber to n+1 for a long time, and I was pleasantly surprised to see it on the front page of Hacker News. It's a fantastic publication.

1. http://nyti.ms/1oCxUeF

Re: Uncanny Valley

#48

Post by bpchaps »

moron4hire wrote: post #37
bpchaps wrote: post #11

Love it. Every time I try to talk about these things with those who participate in these sorts of mentalities, I'm shrugged off as cynical, or non-appreciative of a perception of positive progress. It's very difficult as someone who's naturally not "in it", to explain why it's so difficult and soul crushing.

Oh, yeah. Clearly you just don't "get it". Clearly you're just don't "want it enough". I say, if you're so smart, articulate what "it" actually is, clearly, without resorting to hand-waiving, or else I will default back to assuming there is no actual "it" there.

I have a different personality with different sets of motivations, compounded with mental health differences that make it near impossible to fit in with the SV crowd. It's one of the few crowds like this, despite their swaths of feel-good attitudes and intentions. It's incredibly exclusionary and dismissive. Funny enough, your comment is a great example of what I mean.

I'm assuming you didn't read the article, or else you would have had a better understanding of what I refer to when talking about "it".

Re: Uncanny Valley

#49

Post by neilk »

kough wrote: post #12

I've been out of SF for three years but goddamn if I didn't get swept right back into it while reading this. Fantastic writing, made me inhabit that same mental space that I'd almost forgotten about. I miss it but I never want to go back. The line about working at a startup feeling like an abusive relationship hit home pretty hard.

At one startup I was in, I said to a coworker, "It's like we're all the kids, and daddy drinks" and she had a fit of uncontrollable laughter.

Re: Uncanny Valley

#50

Post by neilk »

Last night I read the entire article, out loud, to my SO.

At first, she said wasn't sympathetic because for her, it was "first world problems", and a millenial's predictable disappointment in the workplace. She's not wrong.

But I read it as a kind of drug memoir. An addict talking about their days breathing in all the toxic and intoxicating fumes of the city. And like every former addict it's impossible not to have a kind of nostalgia for it. Life is simpler, because your whole life is about the next fix.

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