I thought this was going to be about Stadia.
The End of the Computer Age
11–20 of 89 posts
Re: The End of the Computer Age
#12Other than old arguments about innovation deficiencies (wanting flying cars but getting 140 characters), there was little/nothing about "The End of the Computer Age."
The talk was more about scaling (Finance, Tech, Cargo, and People) with some insights regarding which the US has a chance to compete effectively against China (only Finance and Tech) and some (related?) advice to the left and the right in the US:
Left: Move beyond identity politics.
Right: Rethink the doctrine of American exceptionalism.
Thought provoking commentary, but mistitled as "The End of the Computer Age".
Re: The End of the Computer Age
#13"...the iPhones that distract us from our environment also distract us from how strangely old and unchanging our environment is, how you're riding a subway that's 100 years old. And I think sort of a healthier sort of progress would happen on many different fronts."
This quote stood out to me. It seems like we silently concluded that the physical world has evolved enough, developed enough, even though there's a ton of inefficiencies to fix.
I often lament that the built environment of the average American city looks stuck in the 80s, and this quote made me think of that.
Re: The End of the Computer Age
#14"...the iPhones that distract us from our environment also distract us from how strangely old and unchanging our environment is, how you're riding a subway that's 100 years old. And I think sort of a healthier sort of progress would happen on many different fronts." This quote stood out to me. It seems like we silently concluded that the physical world has evolved enough, developed enough, even though there's a ton o…
I think the market is what silently concluded that the physical world has evolved enough; software isn't more important, just more profitable. And because the United States is allergic to public spending, that's all that matters.
Re: The End of the Computer Age
#15It reads like a long rant on Reddit. I'm a lot less impressed with Thiel now.
His fascination with "scale" is interesting. Some of the problems we have today come from the conquest of scale. It used to be that big companies couldn't get out of their own way. This limited how big a company could get before smaller competitors were more efficient. With computers and networks, businesses can now be scaled to national, if not planetary, scale. And we get a very small, and shrinking, number of big players. One Google. One Amazon. One Facebook. One Alibaba. One Tencent. Three big US telcos. Three big US banks.
Re: The End of the Computer Age
#16"...the iPhones that distract us from our environment also distract us from how strangely old and unchanging our environment is, how you're riding a subway that's 100 years old. And I think sort of a healthier sort of progress would happen on many different fronts." This quote stood out to me. It seems like we silently concluded that the physical world has evolved enough, developed enough, even though there's a ton o…
I think the market is what silently concluded that the physical world has evolved enough; software isn't more important, just more profitable. And because the United States is allergic to public spending, that's all that matters.
> And because the United States is allergic to public spending, that's all that matters.
I don't think it's the spending that the US is allergic to, it's the collecting the money to spend.
Re: The End of the Computer Age
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the market is what silently concluded that the physical world has evolved enough; software isn't more important, just more profitable. And because the United States is allergic to public spending, that's all that matters.
> And because the United States is allergic to public spending, that's all that matters. I don't think it's the spending that the US is allergic to, it's the collecting the money to spend.
Ever been to Connecticut? I-84 is still constantly in rough condition, even as property and income taxes climb.
Re: The End of the Computer Age
#18"And so, if we were to rightsize the scaling for our intellectual life, you should describe Harvard, not as one of the thousands of great universities, you should describe it as a Studio 54 nightclub" is really all you need to take away from this. Not for what it says, but for the desperate attempt of those words to make any real sense. Although don't miss out on gems like: "But in practice, the main AI applications…
Quoting him and restating the point isn't an argument. AI fits very neatly into China's policy goals in a way that it doesn't for liberal politics.
We don't know how the improvements in AI are going to play out - it is very easy to see how it could turn out that these are the missing technologies to make a totalitarian state the most productive equilibrium, or communism, or anything else.
Re: The End of the Computer Age
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And because the United States is allergic to public spending, that's all that matters. I don't think it's the spending that the US is allergic to, it's the collecting the money to spend.
Ever been to Connecticut? I-84 is still constantly in rough condition, even as property and income taxes climb.
As a Korean who visited LA this summer, I was shocked to see how unmaintained the roads were, especially the highways. (There were cracks and debris all over the place)
Re: The End of the Computer Age
#20"...the iPhones that distract us from our environment also distract us from how strangely old and unchanging our environment is, how you're riding a subway that's 100 years old. And I think sort of a healthier sort of progress would happen on many different fronts." This quote stood out to me. It seems like we silently concluded that the physical world has evolved enough, developed enough, even though there's a ton o…
In California (can’t speak for other states), much of that “stuck in ” is largely driven by NIMBYs and at what point the place became more or less affluent.
SV seems to have figured out that some land can be redeveloped into apartments relatively recently, but otherwise it looks like 60s was a pretty active development era and most of that stuff is still here. By contrast, in LA much of 50s - 60s sprawl has been replaced by 70-80, or even 90s sprawl.
California is basically screwed as long as prop 13 applies to businesses and apartment buildings - what incentive do you have as the owner to raise your tax base, especially with rent control where you can’t charge more.