21–30 of 106 posts
There is no Silicon Valley problem. She assumes that everyone shares her progressive/leftist view of government. Why is it Silicon Valley's responsibility to "fix government" and not hers?
My impression is that the tech culture pervading SV is built on a foundation of decentralized problem solving on a global scale, finding people who share an interest in the solution to some problem they're faced with, and working towards that solution with them. Intermediaries such as NGOs and governing bodies are not valued, because their operation isn't transparent or accessible. National borders and the government…
Love this: Their goal is to make themselves as appealing—or threatening—to a big player as possible so they can get bought out for a few hundred million dollars and then devote the rest of their lives to a) building Burning Man installations, b) investing in other people’s widgets, or c) both. They really don’t care that much about making the world a better place, mostly because they feel like they don’t have to live…
Also: "Why donate money when people can just download my app and instantly have a better life?" She's talking almost directly to Steve Jobs. http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/the-mystery-of-steve-... The quote is a caricature of a more nuanced position, but articles like this are equally nuts: http://blogs.hbr.org/pallotta/2011/09/steve-jobs-worlds-grea...
Silicon Valley != San Francisco. In fact, the idea of San Francisco being a part of Silicon Valley is a very recent one. The article makes some good points. But if you're going to write about Silicon Valley, the first thing you must do is understand what it is.
Meh. The Silicon Valley rich are famously stingy philanthropists and a defense I’ve heard more than once is that the tools they spend their time building are inherently good. “Why donate money when people can just download my app and instantly have a better life?” Maybe I have a different view on the this from most on HA as I live in Africa, but products like cheaper cellphones have had a far more massive effect for…
This is why I really love the Kiva model: instead of giving money away, you instead become a 2nd/3rd world Angel Investor.
It also makes me think about Hans Rosling's excellent TED talk about population growth and globalization: http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_g...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also: "Why donate money when people can just download my app and instantly have a better life?" She's talking almost directly to Steve Jobs. http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/the-mystery-of-steve-... The quote is a caricature of a more nuanced position, but articles like this are equally nuts: http://blogs.hbr.org/pallotta/2011/09/steve-jobs-worlds-grea...
I'm a "she" by the way :)
My impression is that the tech culture pervading SV is built on a foundation of decentralized problem solving on a global scale, finding people who share an interest in the solution to some problem they're faced with, and working towards that solution with them. Intermediaries such as NGOs and governing bodies are not valued, because their operation isn't transparent or accessible. National borders and the government…
I think you're misunderstanding. I think it's exactly that decentralized, networked approach to problem-solving that holds the potential for technologists to fix big problems. The issue is that in SV most are not focusing on those problems. I WANT the tech community disrupting those old institutions, and I'm frustrated we're not doing more of it.
What happens then is that the people with apps, the people with jobs at Google, Apple, Facebook, live in a completely different urban landscape than ones who aren't in the ecosystem. When we can't see the problems of MUNI we don't feel them, and when they aren't problems for us we won't feel like fixing them. I'd love for us to have more of a civic sense as well, vs this complicated and classed (but faster to build!) layering of private infrastructures.
If Silicon Valley actually tried to become a political force, it might discover that the tech community doesn't agree on what the nation's most important problems are. Or that there is little correlation between the ability to make a lot of money putting advertisements on people's screens and the ability to find practical solutions to complex social problems. Or that the rest of the country doubts the goodness of its motives.
Thanks for wounding me and not giving me a bandage. Or, as I've heard it put, "If you're going to show someone a pile of shit, you better also show them the shovel."
So, taking my own medicine, here's the shovel for a post like this: stop writing posts describing problems that you have no ability, no ideas, and no real capability to solve. Otherwise you're just indulging in self-centered, self-hating navel gazing which does absolutely nothing for the world. I realize that sounds harsh, but it's a useful filter to apply to yourself. Only share actionable anxieties.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're misunderstanding. I think it's exactly that decentralized, networked approach to problem-solving that holds the potential for technologists to fix big problems. The issue is that in SV most are not focusing on those problems. I WANT the tech community disrupting those old institutions, and I'm frustrated we're not doing more of it.
I agree with a lot of what you're saying. I think one issue is actually Silicon Valley's model of "disruption" — ie new solutions replace old ones. For example, instead of fixing public transit in San Francisco (or SF -> SV) we now have all of these new private infrastructures for transit within SF (Uber, Lyft, Cabulous, etc) and SF -> SV (all those shuttles, see: http://stamen.com/zero1/ ). What happens then is that…
One of the most jarring San Francisco experiences I had when I first got here was getting off Mission/16th BART and then walking a block to Valencia street. The difference that block makes is a good metaphor for what I'm trying to describe in this article, but I'm not creative or articulate enough to describe it in this context and have it make sense.