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Build Unix, Not Uber

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Re: Build Unix, Not Uber

#31

Post by wbsss4412 »

andrewxdiamond wrote: post #14
abathur wrote: post #5

At the risk of saying something dumb and meta... it's ideas all the way down (for a really long time now). The individual corporations are ideas, and then of course there's the idea of the corporation itself. As the post notes, corporations only work because of other ideas about property rights and scarcity. But more fundamentally they only work because they're an idea quite a few people already believe in. I'm a lit…

> good ideas that don't make market sense I think this is incorrect framing. You have to shape the market, not the idea. Capitalism’s fault is not accounting for externalized costs, like climate change. The market allocates resources very effectively, but the costs the market uses to allocate resources are lies. They omit costs that producers can ignore or otherwise avoid paying for. If these externalities were captu…

If I could make one change to popular parlance (or perhaps I should say technical jargon), it would be the usage of the word externality. While it is a technically correct description, the framing implied leads to analysis that I don’t think is fundamentally sound.

Markets optimize for products. If something can’t be made into a product wherein the full value and cost to society is express captured within the transaction itself, you generally end up with less than ideal outcomes.

Capitalism is the best system for optimizing for productive efficiency, but creating an abundance of material wealth isn’t quite the same thing as making society as a whole the best that is can be.

Re: Build Unix, Not Uber

#32

Post by CSMastermind »

dasil003 wrote: post #11
tmp_anon_22 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how little credit is given to GPS in Uber's story Uber would not exist without GPS. I wonder how many other of the unicorns: * Twitter without Rails * Facebook without PHP (I think this is fair but maybe not) * Reddit without Python * Tesla and Solar City without huge government subsidies Crazy to think how many Lake Tahoe vacation homes were transferred thanks to these projects.

Middle three don't feel a major dependency. I would say: - Twitter without iTunes Podcast Directory (because it killed Odeo, the parent business) - Facebook without MySpace / Friendster - Reddit without Digg / Slashdot

Even then they might look different but someone would have had the idea for social media. Those exact companies might not exist or they might look different but it's not like the business model would go away.

Take away GPS and Uber is a fundamentally different product.

Re: Build Unix, Not Uber

#33

Post by beej71 »

EddieDante wrote: post #15
vanjajaja1 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what's the tldr on a proposed world where the unix mistake didn't happen? how could have computing played out and iterated better?

GP should be grateful we didn't get stuck with Multics, ITS, or TOPS20 instead.

No kidding. The playing field wasn't super great, and Unix was and is still a top contender even today.

CP/M. OS/2. MS-DOS. OS/2 Warp. Windows. Windows NT. Mac OS. VMS...

Re: Build Unix, Not Uber

#34

Post by spideymans »

Animats wrote: post #25

An alternative to the corporation is the chaord. This is an idea that went nowhere. Except that Visa International was a chaord. A chaord is useful when you have a shared resource that's needed by competing entities. That's exactly what Visa International was set up to be. It's an operator of a data network and a standards body. It doesn't issue cards. It doesn't handle money. It just transmits transaction data betwe…

There might be potential for this chaord idea in telecommunications and utilities.

Re: Build Unix, Not Uber

#35

Post by reidjs »

tmp_anon_22 wrote: post #4
sklargh wrote: post #2

It's always interesting to me how little credit is given to GPS in Uber's story. The existence of space-based, free and ubiquitous semi-precise navigation was an enormous subsidy.

> how little credit is given to GPS in Uber's story Uber would not exist without GPS. I wonder how many other of the unicorns: * Twitter without Rails * Facebook without PHP (I think this is fair but maybe not) * Reddit without Python * Tesla and Solar City without huge government subsidies Crazy to think how many Lake Tahoe vacation homes were transferred thanks to these projects.

A better analogy may be most those couldn’t exist without the Internet

Re: Build Unix, Not Uber

#36

Post by bitwize »

tmp_anon_22 wrote: post #4
sklargh wrote: post #2

It's always interesting to me how little credit is given to GPS in Uber's story. The existence of space-based, free and ubiquitous semi-precise navigation was an enormous subsidy.

> how little credit is given to GPS in Uber's story Uber would not exist without GPS. I wonder how many other of the unicorns: * Twitter without Rails * Facebook without PHP (I think this is fair but maybe not) * Reddit without Python * Tesla and Solar City without huge government subsidies Crazy to think how many Lake Tahoe vacation homes were transferred thanks to these projects.

Reddit without Python might still have been written in Lisp!

Re: Build Unix, Not Uber

#37

Post by cpursley »

aunderscored wrote: post #9
cosmotic wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of alternative programming languages that those companies could have used. There's no GPS alternative for Uber.

GLONASS, But that's splitting hairs

GLONASS is pretty underrated. For example, it powers a whole bunch of vital farm equipment in the US.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/06/invas...

Re: Build Unix, Not Uber

#38

Post by pj_mukh »

sklargh wrote: post #2

It's always interesting to me how little credit is given to GPS in Uber's story. The existence of space-based, free and ubiquitous semi-precise navigation was an enormous subsidy.

I want something that doesn’t operate on scarcity (like the corporation), but can work at the velocity of a corporation.

Things like GPS and the internet would’ve been deployed much faster by a private corporation but then they would be dumb monopolies as opposed to the public good they are now.

Also we need a space to work on big dumb ideas and toys[1] and neither Unix, Uber or GPS fit in that category. What is that sweet spot?

[1] https://www.ycombinator.com/library/3U-why-build-toys

Re: Build Unix, Not Uber

#39

Post by squarefoot »

seized wrote: post #30
aunderscored wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GLONASS, But that's splitting hairs

Although the Russian air force planes with a Garmin taped to the control panel may indicate otherwise on that technology....

It could also be a way to better resist to jamming or (government mandated) data pollution by matching the data from the two receivers for significant differences. I'm 100% pro-Ukraine but that looks a smart move to me.

Re: Build Unix, Not Uber

#40

Post by bitwize »

Animats wrote: post #25

An alternative to the corporation is the chaord. This is an idea that went nowhere. Except that Visa International was a chaord. A chaord is useful when you have a shared resource that's needed by competing entities. That's exactly what Visa International was set up to be. It's an operator of a data network and a standards body. It doesn't issue cards. It doesn't handle money. It just transmits transaction data betwe…

Other examples: UL, arguably AT&T before the breakup, the Queensland public bus system which does privatization "right": the government establishes common routes and a common fare system, private carriers drive the routes and compete on quality and price.

Chaordic entities are a good choice for government administration of public services without being too heavy-handed with state intervention.

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