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Silicon Valley's Problem

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Re: Silicon Valley's Problem

#91

Post by natrius »

rayiner wrote: post #84
natrius wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why you think it's instructive to compare government investments to venture capital. The government engages in plenty of investments, and none of them operate that way.

The fact that government makes an investment on favorable terms does not change the underlying nature of the investment. The point is to challenge the self aggrandizing west coast narrative of rugged individualists setting out and building civilization from the desert. In reality, the west coast was an investment of the taxpayers of the east coast. Without that investment, California would be Mexico, or perhaps a pri…

The west coast was populated by the taxpayers of the east coast in order to prevent it from falling into the hands of another power. Those "favorable terms" weren't charity; they were an investment that has paid off.

This is a dumb argument. I'm done.

Re: Silicon Valley's Problem

#92

Post by sskates »

fatbird wrote: post #85
sskates wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright, I'll bite. I intensely care about maximizing my positive impact. After looking at a lot of things in college, including academic research, finance, consulting, nonprofits, and engineering at a big company, I concluded starting a company was the best way to have an outsized impact on other people's lives. That is why I'm running a company now. I am trying to build a Microsoft. It's very easy to be dismissive…

Instagram. An app for doing what we were all doing already anyway, but now with a lot of faux-effect filters. Sold for a billion dollars. All that time, energy, and money that did not one thing to help anyone else or measurably improve the world.

Instagram had 13 employees when it was acquired- not that much effort to impact 30 million people. You might dismiss Instagram's innovations, but dismissing the importance of an interface is like dismissing a new programming language because there are already programming languages that are Turing complete.

Re: Silicon Valley's Problem

#93

Post by rayiner »

001sky wrote: post #90
rayiner wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that government makes an investment on favorable terms does not change the underlying nature of the investment. The point is to challenge the self aggrandizing west coast narrative of rugged individualists setting out and building civilization from the desert. In reality, the west coast was an investment of the taxpayers of the east coast. Without that investment, California would be Mexico, or perhaps a pri…

Its not an investment, its a public good. By definition, that is how they work. You're using a very flawed anology. Parkland is common public good, and most of the west is publicly accessible. And where it is not, it is most often military in use. Or, it has been set aside for rich people to benefit from. Think about who really gets the value of Central Park in NYC vs Who can afford a home closeby.

Irrigation isn't a public good. Public goods are non-excludable and non-rivalrous, neither of which apply to public infrastructure.

Re: Silicon Valley's Problem

#94

Post by cbracy »

sskates wrote: post #81
fatbird wrote: post #8

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…

Alright, I'll bite. I intensely care about maximizing my positive impact. After looking at a lot of things in college, including academic research, finance, consulting, nonprofits, and engineering at a big company, I concluded starting a company was the best way to have an outsized impact on other people's lives. That is why I'm running a company now. I am trying to build a Microsoft. It's very easy to be dismissive…

CrowdTilt

Re: Silicon Valley's Problem

#95

Post by cbracy »

sskates wrote: post #92
fatbird wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instagram. An app for doing what we were all doing already anyway, but now with a lot of faux-effect filters. Sold for a billion dollars. All that time, energy, and money that did not one thing to help anyone else or measurably improve the world.

Instagram had 13 employees when it was acquired- not that much effort to impact 30 million people. You might dismiss Instagram's innovations, but dismissing the importance of an interface is like dismissing a new programming language because there are already programming languages that are Turing complete.

Just because 30 million people are using it doesn't mean it "impacted" them.

Re: Silicon Valley's Problem

#96

Post by Synthetase »

orionblastar wrote: post #54
Synthetase wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's such a huge problem why don't you go fix it? Or are you volunteering other peoples time?

It takes more than one person to fix this mess. For example it takes having not only a working business plan, but a working business plan that makes sense. For example it takes a quality control, six sigma program to make sure hardware and software costs less to support than the revenue it brings in. For example it takes VCs not afraid of investing in teams and organizations of people not heard of before, that have g…

I'm aware that many systemic problems require multiple people to resolve as your incredibly insightful comment notes.

This post however, is complaining for the sake of complaining. I for one do not rail against the Second Law of Thermodynamics for destroying my beautiful perpetual motion machine ideas.

Similarly, offering vague pablums on the state of business in Silicon Valley without real solutions is at best indulgent.

Re: Silicon Valley's Problem

#97

Post by 001sky »

rayiner wrote: post #93
001sky wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not an investment, its a public good. By definition, that is how they work. You're using a very flawed anology. Parkland is common public good, and most of the west is publicly accessible. And where it is not, it is most often military in use. Or, it has been set aside for rich people to benefit from. Think about who really gets the value of Central Park in NYC vs Who can afford a home closeby.

Irrigation isn't a public good. Public goods are non-excludable and non-rivalrous, neither of which apply to public infrastructure.

Right, but this is a minor subset of your initial premise. And even in that subset, outside of water/mineral rights[1], you are talking edge cases. A road is a quasi-public-good until there is a traffic jam. Central park is a quasi-public good until it is occupied by a permit holder, etc.

Second, The public policy rationale for these "investments" is to provide quasi-public good as services. For example, the public ownership of military installations is not a "public good" in terms of property (you cant take a walk at area 51) but defense is a quasi-public good (avail at ~zero marginal cost to the broad public).

___________________

Its important to just keep some perspective. Public goods and "profitable investments" (eg, rent seeking ones) are quite distinct concepts. And in part we entrust assets subject to massive rent-seeking to be held in common ownership "for the public good" expressly to avoid exploitation their rent seeking potential.

[1] The exploitation of water/mineral rights relating to public land are often well trodden areas of legal and policy debate, and span levels of abstraction (state/local/regional etc).

Re: Silicon Valley's Problem

#98

Post by fatbird »

sskates wrote: post #92
fatbird wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instagram. An app for doing what we were all doing already anyway, but now with a lot of faux-effect filters. Sold for a billion dollars. All that time, energy, and money that did not one thing to help anyone else or measurably improve the world.

Instagram had 13 employees when it was acquired- not that much effort to impact 30 million people. You might dismiss Instagram's innovations, but dismissing the importance of an interface is like dismissing a new programming language because there are already programming languages that are Turing complete.

Not seeing the impact there. Not seeing anything that couldn't be trivially handled by something already existing.

I'm not saying Instagram is worthless. I'm saying Instagram is a new flavour of toothpaste. There's something kind of distasteful about a new flavour of toothpaste marshalling the attention and money that it did, but it's not that I blame Instagram for that. But I do compare it to, say, the Gates Foundation, and it's hard not to think "boy, that whole enterprise could have had vastly greater beneficial impact to a lot more people than it did."

Where does the billion dollars that Instagram commanded go? Into a constantly recycling pool of geeks and cash in the Valley who keep funding more companies inventing new flavours of toothpaste, hoping to be either the next Instagram or the next Facebook buying Instagram. Ms. Bracy's whole exhortation is just this: Maybe direct some of that energy, some of that attention, some of that money and time, outside of the incestuous enterprise that is Silicon Valley.

Re: Silicon Valley's Problem

#99

Post by [deleted] »

eaurouge wrote: post #14

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.

[deleted]

Re: Silicon Valley's Problem

#100

Post by cbracy »

dageshi wrote: post #62
cbracy wrote: post #22

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.

The Technologists have built themselves the equivalent of a new wild west which is still being explored and built upon. I don't think they're very interested in doing the equivalent of sailing back to England to try and reform the British parliament.

To extend the analogy, expanding to the wild west eventually required a revolutionary war with Great Britian. That's a war Silicon Valley is woefully unprepared for.
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