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The hypocrisy in Silicon Valley's big talk on innovation

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Re: The hypocrisy in Silicon Valley's big talk on innovation

#31

Post by danielweber »

rayiner wrote: post #12
dreamdu5t wrote: post #10

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…

I haven't done any kind of scientific survey, but it seems the best government projects are those without any kind of expectation of anyone profiting or making the money back.

Not that I don't like profit motives. I love them. But if there is a profit motive, you have to really really question why private industry isn't doing it instead.

Re: The hypocrisy in Silicon Valley's big talk on innovation

#32

Post by anigbrowl »

andyl wrote: post #7

"Silicon Valley loves to talk big about innovation; it's just not as good at following through." BS. Computing, Networking, Biotech, Internet, and more. Silicon Valley has delivered, and there is more to come. Not every new investment is going to change the world. But collectively, the track record is very strong.

I agree, and think big innovation can result from simple goals - adjusting my lights or heating via a smartphone app is a 'small problem' but an 'internet of things', ie an ecosystem of tiny and cheap embedded computing, will be important in multiple ways, from energy efficiency to AI.

that said, there is an awful lot of wank about. I console myself with the thought that it was probably always like that; for every invention like the telegraph there were three people flogging 'galvanick spirit communicators,' questionable beauty treatments, or silly toys. For every Atari there's also a Chuck E. Cheese :-)

Re: The hypocrisy in Silicon Valley's big talk on innovation

#33

Post by samstave »

rayiner wrote: post #12
dreamdu5t wrote: post #10

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…

DARPA is amazing, at least for their history and what has come from them.

Dies any other country have a DARPA equivalent? Or, more specifically, did any other country have a DARPA equivalent 40+ years ago?

Re: The hypocrisy in Silicon Valley's big talk on innovation

#34

Post by bitcartel »

kmfrk wrote: post #26
corford wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is one hell of a review. Thanks for the link.

Morozov is generally a person you'll want to follow. He's a great modern intellectual. 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 . :)

Eddie Huang describes TED as a 'Scientology summer camp'. He's not quite as eloquent as Morozov but entertaining nonetheless with interesting details about what TED fellows get up to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hwLMBdnbXk

Re: The hypocrisy in Silicon Valley's big talk on innovation

#35

Post by BummerCloud »

Clayton Christensen was profiled in Wired recently and came to a similar conclusion:

"We’ve encouraged managers to measure profitability based on a return on net assets, or return on capital employed. That encourages companies to liberate their capital, so they invest in efficiency innovations, which means they can make more money with fewer resources. But what the economy ultimately needs are empowering innovations—like the Model T, the transistor radio. Empowering innovations require long-term investments, which tie up capital for years and years. So companies are using capital to create more capital, and consequently the world is awash in capital but the innovations we need to advance aren’t there."

http://www.wired.com/business/2013/02/mf-clayton-christensen...

Re: The hypocrisy in Silicon Valley's big talk on innovation

#36

Post by NoPiece »

msrpotus wrote: post #15
dreamdu5t wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats not true. There was no long view government plan to create what we now call the Internet.

But there were government plans to create telecom networks that ultimately led to the internet.

While there was a ton of amazing stuff going on inside Bell Labs, it really seems like progress in telecom didn't accelerate until after the ATT breakup. If you think the cell phone situation now is bad, you used to have to rent your home phone, like a cable box, from the phone company.

Re: The hypocrisy in Silicon Valley's big talk on innovation

#37

Post by anigbrowl »

kmfrk wrote: post #26
corford wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is one hell of a review. Thanks for the link.

Morozov is generally a person you'll want to follow. He's a great modern intellectual. 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 . :)

Excellent stuff.

BTW the New Republic has a beautifully clean reading UI - the site has the same feel of Instapaper or ReadItLater - seems like they decided 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.'

Re: The hypocrisy in Silicon Valley's big talk on innovation

#38

Post by russell »

dreamdu5t wrote: post #10
hencq wrote: post #6

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.

dreamdu5t you are so wrong that you deserve to be onvoted, but I dont do that. The basic IP technology was all government funded and developed by BB&N. The original internet was ARPAnet, funded by the government to link the government, military, universities, and military contractors (.gov, .mil, .edu, and .com). The Internet itself was set up separate from DARPAnet by government legislation and funding. The whole domain registration mechanism was at one time under the ultimate control of the Commerce Department. The world wide web protocol was developed at CERN, funded by multiple governments. The browser that became Netscape was developed at the University of Illinois. It was only after the Internet was set by the government did we get the explosion of users and applications. The competitors to the the internet developed by private corporations, like MCI mail or Prodigy, are all dead now.

Re: The hypocrisy in Silicon Valley's big talk on innovation

#39

Post by orangethirty »

samstave wrote: post #33
rayiner wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

DARPA is amazing, at least for their history and what has come from them. Dies any other country have a DARPA equivalent? Or, more specifically, did any other country have a DARPA equivalent 40+ years ago?

I'm sure Russia would at least have something like it.

Re: The hypocrisy in Silicon Valley's big talk on innovation

#40

Post by pbiggar »

potatolicious wrote: post #19
andyl wrote: post #7

"Silicon Valley loves to talk big about innovation; it's just not as good at following through." BS. Computing, Networking, Biotech, Internet, and more. Silicon Valley has delivered, and there is more to come. Not every new investment is going to change the world. But collectively, the track record is very strong.

"Very strong" and "more to come"? Pray tell, what in the following lists qualify as the sort of "big innovations" we're talking about? [1] http://a16z.com/portfolio/ [2] http://firstround.com/companies/ [3] http://www.kpcb.com/companies Don't get me wrong, these lists contain a lot of great products that I'm happy exist - but big and world-changing they are not. The fact that the typical SV VC scene funds one or two…

Big innovations from those lists (which I call things that are - or are intended to be - life-changing for a reasonably large number of people):

airbnb, asana, box, facebook, github, meteor, picloud, pinterest, skype, stripe, twitter, uber, yourmechanic, discourse, fundersclub, hoteltonight, mint, onekingslane, simple, square, taskrabbit, coursera, groupon, nest, spotify,

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