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But if you drop the pretense, how will you continue to convince everyone that SV is the center of the tech universe and that everything worthwhile that happens must originate or migrate to those few square miles on the planet?
Evgeny Morozov wrote a must-read book review that deals with this bloviating mentality: http://bookforum.com/inprint/019_05/10825 . Can't wait to read his upcoming book on the subject.
And you can see here the difference between an idea-man and an innovator.Because in my opinion an idea-man can have good ideas and make some money out of them but an innovator will have brilliant ideas, passion to build something extraordinary, smart, without money being the first priority.His goal is to change the world.Now that is someone I would like to work with, not the typical I-have-an-idea-you-build-it-and-I-will-come-later-to-see-whatsup.
"That's fine, that's capitalism - and these incremental improvements lead to slow productivity gains that at least quicken the pulse of economists. But maybe let's drop the pretense that we're curing cancer unless, you know, we're curing cancer." Reasonable and astute point. "An Economist article this year exploring the state of innovation noted that centuries of scientific progress means it takes ever longer for peo…
Can you elaborate why that is ironic? Most of the basic science is funded by governments (throughout the world, not just the US). Isn't that supposed to be the role of government (funding research that has no immediate financial prospects)?
I think he has a good point. Japan and Europe have more 'hands on' regulatory regimes and even though regulations are stereotypically more onerous in Europe, it's arguably more results-driven and less of a procedural minefield. Of course the downside of this is that there aren't as many avenues of appeal and if the judgement of a regulatory authority goes against you then you may have to just grin and bear it; that's problematic for startups which don't have a history of successful commercial operations behind them and may find compliance more difficult and expensive.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thats not true. There was no long view government plan to create what we now call the Internet.
The whole point of blue-sky R&D funding is that you can't plan exactly what you're going to get out of it. Today DARPA is a bit more focused on practical application than it used to be, but it's ethos is still: "let's throw $10-30 million at a bunch of smart people and see what happens." The "plan" is to fund fundamental R&D and hope something really useful comes out of it. In that sense, the development of the inter…
If your engineering challenge is putting filters on pictures, you're probably going to have less positive spillovers - not that you wouldn't be solving a real problem, but it's a different kind of thing.
Evgeny Morozov wrote a must-read book review that deals with this bloviating mentality: http://bookforum.com/inprint/019_05/10825 . Can't wait to read his upcoming book on the subject.
That is one hell of a review. Thanks for the link.
His TED take-down is pure gold, too: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/books-and-arts/magazine/1....
I submitted his book review a while ago, if people want to discuss it at length. I imagine it'll ruffle the feathers of no small amount of people on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5346781. :)
"That's fine, that's capitalism - and these incremental improvements lead to slow productivity gains that at least quicken the pulse of economists. But maybe let's drop the pretense that we're curing cancer unless, you know, we're curing cancer." Reasonable and astute point. "An Economist article this year exploring the state of innovation noted that centuries of scientific progress means it takes ever longer for peo…
However, there's a lot things where there's a ton of value-creation without enough capture. This is where collective action problems must be solved. This could be a consortia like an IEEE standard, gov't funding like the NSF, or something like a city. Many options, but none purely capitalist in the traditional sense of the word.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article makes that exact point: > Only governments had the long view and available cash to fund things like supercolliders, deep space programs and - oh yeah - the development of the Internet.
Thats not true. There was no long view government plan to create what we now call the Internet.
Personally I think web & mobile startups are getting easier to create so more people are becoming entrepreneurs to take advantage of that; the pie is getting bigger. I believe there are still plenty of "deep" tech innovators out there along with investors who believe in them.
Perhaps these "deep" tech innovators don't get much media coverage because they don't need it, therefore we don't usually hear about them.