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The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

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Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#51

Post by HoldOnAMinute »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #6

While I can understand the frustration and the author makes some good points, a lot of the anger feels oddly misplaced. Yes, engineer types want to solve problems with inventions rather than overhauling the entire nation's infrastructure. Maybe, just maybe, that's because inventing something is actually within their grasp, whereas wholesale replacing every civil engineer and architect in the country isn't? Or replaci…

You haven't addressed the grift problem. Without support for traditional nepotism/cronyism grift, how do you expect to motivate politicians?

You won't always be able to count on the threat of exposing their sexual habits, which has been working for decades.

Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#53

Post by hamdingers »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #39
hamdingers wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hyperloop and Boring Company were both created as distractions from real proven transit technologies, and the latter has been quite successful at getting rail projects cancelled or at least confusing politicians enough to delay them.

So it's basically just Tesla/Musk here, when people say "tech companies"? Musk is an asshole, no argument there, but most tech company CEOs aren't nearly that crazy.

No, I provided one particularly eggregious example. Uber/Lyft have also lobbied against transit. The Google shuttles OP alludes to interfered with real transit operations.

Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#54

Post by nemomarx »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #40
munk-a wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, spending more on transit is a good idea, but it's not the tech companies' fault that it's perennially underfunded I think your overall point is relatively sound but that example is just terrible... Elon Musk has repeatedly lobbied against transit expansion and his Hyperloop pitch arguably derailed HSR talks in California for half a decade while the Las Vegas teslertube prevented the expansion of a monorail to…

I'll grant you Musk being terrible, no argument there, but that's not tech companies as a whole. And California hardly needed any help to sabotage its HSR, the state's whole process for that kind of development is incredibly backwards and broken, sadly.

it's not really tech companies fault on this either but it sucks to see large amounts of investor money going to them when it could go to solving the issue more efficiently.

(although obviously it would be less profitable for the investors so it won't happen)

I think thats the core frustration

Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#55

Post by antonvs »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #6

While I can understand the frustration and the author makes some good points, a lot of the anger feels oddly misplaced. Yes, engineer types want to solve problems with inventions rather than overhauling the entire nation's infrastructure. Maybe, just maybe, that's because inventing something is actually within their grasp, whereas wholesale replacing every civil engineer and architect in the country isn't? Or replaci…

> Maybe, just maybe, that's because inventing something is actually within their grasp

The problem is that inventing a solution that no-one needs or wants and then using venture money to hype it up feels like rubbing salt in a wound for the very people they're claiming to try to help.

The point is they're not actually trying to help those people. They're using them as a marketing tool to further their own ambition to make money.

The anger is understandable.

Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#56

Post by Lalabadie »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #35
lkey wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contributing to a net loss of funding and attention, all while making the public more ignorant and more passive , results in material harms to the population they claim to serve. This kind of self-aggrandizement at other's expense deserves to be recognized as it is and should be met with an equal measure of contempt.

Really letting the perfect be the enemy of the good here. No, we can't let people attempt new inventions, some of which may actually help, because the mere fact that people will see them may result in less attention for more basic, important stuff. Is there solid evidence that TED talks about stair-climbing wheelchairs undermine actual regulations and investments in ramps, or is this more of a "my source is that I ma…

You replied "Letting perfect be the enemy of good" several times in the comments here. I think the sentence works against the arguments you're making:

Perfect is the promise of a climb-everywhere-wheelchair. It's hypothetical, dreamed up, and causing people to forego the immediate and good solution (ramps).

Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#57

Post by bluefirebrand »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #21
watwut wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many "engineer types" will gladly care about doorknobs and infrastructure details. There is ideological opposition against from business types and some other tech types. > it's not the tech companies' fault that it's perennially underfunded, it's politicians and the voters who put them there. Tech companies pushed for exactly that outcome and spent a lot on lobbying and convincing. We totally can blame them for it.

> Many "engineer types" will gladly care about doorknobs and infrastructure details. Some will, and that's great, but as the blog post accurately points out, the invention of these things isn't the primary issue, it's the lack of implementation. And that isn't the fault of the engineers designing better doorknobs or ramps. > Tech companies pushed for exactly that outcome and spent a lot on lobbying and convincing. We…

> Trying to blame this on tech companies is a lame excuse.

Depends. Do car manufacturers count as tech companies?

The obsession with cars and car infrastructure isn't accidental either, it's been manufactured and pushed heavily by car companies over decades. Same with the opposition to public transit. None of this stuff is happening 100% organically, it's being pushed by corporate interests via lobbying with government and funding advertising at individuals

Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#58

Post by fluoridation »

>every time I see one of these vapid videos.

>And watching the video,

>I am blind

Um...

EDIT: Actually, the post reads as if two different people wrote it. The first half doesn't mention anything about blindness, and the second half doesn't mention anything about wheelchairs. But there's only one credit, so I don't know what's going on.

Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#59

Post by LorenPechtel »

fellowniusmonk wrote: post #5

I have a buddy who did his Human Factors PHd at wright state/wright patt nearly 15 years ago. "Tech people" have a lot of lies they believe, about disabilities, about valid addresses, everything. When he told me that schools for the blind train their student to fact check things like directions and not simply rely on a single source while navigating new terrain it clicked for me that the sighted have no clue and symp…

And people have such a poor distinction of exactly where the limits lie.

My mother was blind. I was able to teach her how to glue up PVC. (For those of you who don't know--it's a don't-touch, less than a minute of working time and sets even faster if assembled and not moving.) Could she build things out of PVC? Yes. Could she repair a pipe? No. She needed everything perfectly arranged, an existing pipe wouldn't be perfectly arranged. And when my father died people wouldn't believe the big power tools in the garage were hers, not his. (Stuff where she could measure and clamp, hands only on the tool's controls.)

Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#60

Post by stevenfoster »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #6

While I can understand the frustration and the author makes some good points, a lot of the anger feels oddly misplaced. Yes, engineer types want to solve problems with inventions rather than overhauling the entire nation's infrastructure. Maybe, just maybe, that's because inventing something is actually within their grasp, whereas wholesale replacing every civil engineer and architect in the country isn't? Or replaci…

"...the author makes some good points, a lot of the anger feels oddly misplaced." a significant portion of my internet experience could be boiled down to this single sentence.
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