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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

#141

Post by venus »

contingencies wrote: post #137
te_chris wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This rings true and people always seem to forget that it's much easier to innovate when the cost of living is lower. I'm currently living in Auckland, New Zealand, which by NZ (and world standards I think, though can't cite anything off hand) is quite expensive, but myself and my girlfriend have been contemplating moving to Sydney, Australia, a city which is one of most expensive in the world but where we would both…

As an Aussie/Kiwi dual citizen in China, I wonder why you don't consider moving to Asia. Sydney, where I was born, is ridiculously pricey, and while the harbour is beautiful and the city fairly green (in parts), it's not really that international and the quality of life doesn't actually match the image once you start paying taxes and cost of living. That said, it's a safe choice.

Where in Asia? You might be a dual Chinese citizen, but most of us are certainly not, and the language would be another barrier. Singapore and HK have a lower language barrier but there's still the issue of visas and they are not exactly cheap. Japan is lovely but has the same issues of visa and language. You could sit on a beach in Vietnam or Thailand but if you're going to do that you may as well live in a country town here.

There's not many "perfect" options.

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

#142

Post by stretchwithme »

Whenever fundamental innovation is successful and a huge platform is created, it is followed by the creation of companies that exploit that platform.

That may take away from more fundamental innovation in the short term but creates more resources to pursue them in the long term. Its nothing to be concerned about.

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

#143

Post by OGinparadise »

saraid216 wrote: post #136
OGinparadise wrote: post #8

Another thing: as companies get larger they will try to squeeze competitors, fire employees and do everything possible to increase their margins. Legal, but they shouldn't brag about it. Edited to add: Apple, Microsoft and Google alone have close to $250 Billion in the bank, $250,000,000,000 and what we hear each quarter about them? Increased margins, more and more ads, increased prices on software, anti-competitive…

I keep hearing about self-driving cars...

Oh, you must've heard about BMW, Audi and other car manufacturers that can't match Google's PR machine http://www.nydailynews.com/autos/making-self-driving-cars-ev...

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

#144

Post by bokonist »

michaelochurch wrote: post #106
te_chris wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This rings true and people always seem to forget that it's much easier to innovate when the cost of living is lower. I'm currently living in Auckland, New Zealand, which by NZ (and world standards I think, though can't cite anything off hand) is quite expensive, but myself and my girlfriend have been contemplating moving to Sydney, Australia, a city which is one of most expensive in the world but where we would both…

This rings true and people always seem to forget that it's much easier to innovate when the cost of living is lower. The problem, or the balance that must be struck, is that it's hard to innovate without being surrounded by other innovative people. You need a city with a critical mass of innovative, talented people and a low cost-of-living. California in the 1970s had that. I don't know what the 2013 analogue is, or…

Expensive real estate is a deliberate policy of the government. Local government zoning laws keep the supply tight. And low interest rates and easy credit enable people to take out huge loans to bid up the prices of real estate.

To get cheap housing, the government would just need to repeal zoning laws and limit all the size of all home mortgages from any government subsidized institution (FDIC insured banks, etc.) to a maximum of 3X median income with a 25% down payment. That would get housing prices down very fast.

The government keeps housing expensive, because older home owners are one of the most powerful voting blocks. Your average 60 year old homeowner is much more likely to vote than your 25 year old apartment dweller. Furthermore, the homeowner is going to be irate and vote against any politician who enacts policies that make their home price go down, while the 25 year old is not really paying attention.

You're committing the "deus ex machina" fallacy where by you seem to assume that the government has the incentives and institutional ability to effectively manage public housing and keep the cost of housing down. The actual experienced history of government housing in the U.S. has been positively atrocious. And in terms of cost, government housing generally costs about twice as much to build as the equivalent private sector housing.

The really hard problems are: how do you wrest political power away from middle-aged home owners? How in general do you make government work for the general interest as a whole rather than work for powerful factional interests (such as homeowners, construction unions, etc.)

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

#145

Post by calibraxis »

calibraxis wrote: post #90
kevinalexbrown wrote: post #49

Edit: Seriously, I really want to know what people think about the question at the end. I worked with someone who works at cd2, and on a selfish note I'm just curious. I'm a "pasty scientist" paid by DARPA, in biotech. I work for someone who previously founded a brain-machine-interface company that had a small IPO (cyberkinetics). I would love nothing more than to see things I work on get turned into viable products.…

Have the US government buy the output of these firms. Like how it subsidized transistors by buying Western Electric's output, while transistors were otherwise unprofitable. ( http://books.google.com/books?id=n6PGe0TZuKMC&lpg=PA193&... ) Just look at the first letter in DARPA. Those subsidizing your research are also customers you want. (The military.)

Sorry, I somehow missed that you are in biotech. My last sentence may not apply to you; I don't know what you're researching.

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

#146

Post by contingencies »

venus wrote: post #141
contingencies wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Aussie/Kiwi dual citizen in China, I wonder why you don't consider moving to Asia. Sydney, where I was born, is ridiculously pricey, and while the harbour is beautiful and the city fairly green (in parts), it's not really that international and the quality of life doesn't actually match the image once you start paying taxes and cost of living. That said, it's a safe choice.

Where in Asia? You might be a dual Chinese citizen, but most of us are certainly not, and the language would be another barrier. Singapore and HK have a lower language barrier but there's still the issue of visas and they are not exactly cheap. Japan is lovely but has the same issues of visa and language. You could sit on a beach in Vietnam or Thailand but if you're going to do that you may as well live in a country…

I'm not a Chinese citizen, I'm an anglo-Australian. I just happened to prefer living in Asia since about 12 years ago. By all means, if you don't enjoy risk taking, language learning or being in another culture, then stay in your home culture and pontificate about how great your country towns are. If you want the reward, you have to take some risk. All visas issues can be solved with persistence. Life is what you make of it.

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

#147

Post by unclebucknasty »

robomartin wrote: post #108
kevinalexbrown wrote: post #49

Edit: Seriously, I really want to know what people think about the question at the end. I worked with someone who works at cd2, and on a selfish note I'm just curious. I'm a "pasty scientist" paid by DARPA, in biotech. I work for someone who previously founded a brain-machine-interface company that had a small IPO (cyberkinetics). I would love nothing more than to see things I work on get turned into viable products.…

One issue I have not been able to resolve in thinking about the idea of society-funded research has to do with what I'll refer to as "bad" global actors. It is no secret that China shines for its lack of respect for intellectual property. The same is true for their willingness to steal just about anything from anyone and make it their own. If we, as an open society, fund programs costing billions of dollars we would,…

Your comment and the dilemma you present are very interesting.

I think part of the problem is that we have reduced everything to a matter of economics and profit. It has become the measure of value for everything, so much so that intelligent, compassionate people can discuss the value of human life in terms of dollars and jobs.

So, I think the problem you suggest is the product of a false choice.

That is, IMO if we had a cure for cancer, it is not that we should find it unfair that the "wrong" people might profit. It is that we should expect that no one would profit. Some things should be done for the good of all humanity. Why need there be financial incentive in ending suffering? And, why should there be financial reward in doing so?

This is the core problem of a capitalism run amok. Governments the world over should be engaged in benevolent research as an expression of the will of the people they represent, and for the betterment of same. It is, in my view, a grievous mistake that we must always seek a way to commercialize our activity in order to justify it.

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

#148

Post by michaelochurch »

bokonist wrote: post #144
michaelochurch wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This rings true and people always seem to forget that it's much easier to innovate when the cost of living is lower. The problem, or the balance that must be struck, is that it's hard to innovate without being surrounded by other innovative people. You need a city with a critical mass of innovative, talented people and a low cost-of-living. California in the 1970s had that. I don't know what the 2013 analogue is, or…

Expensive real estate is a deliberate policy of the government. Local government zoning laws keep the supply tight. And low interest rates and easy credit enable people to take out huge loans to bid up the prices of real estate. To get cheap housing, the government would just need to repeal zoning laws and limit all the size of all home mortgages from any government subsidized institution (FDIC insured banks, etc.) t…

Wry reply: one thing that might help is the fact that not many Generation X (and Millennial) people are going to be cozy homeowners in their 50s and 60s...

What you say is so right that it's painful. Expensive real estate is a classic generational ripoff. These people had it easy but didn't save money, so they made up for it by rigging house prices with the post-1965 crowd paying a monstrous bill.

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

#149

Post by pbiggar »

10098 wrote: post #118
pbiggar wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,

Github? Seriously?! I'm sorry, this just completely blows my mind. I'd understand if you called git innovation (though the real innovation is distributed version control, and it existed before git, git is just a very good implementation), but calling github "innovation" seriously lowers the bar for that concept. I mean, I love github, but come on, they aren't even the first ones to come up with the idea. SourceForge…

If you think that sourceforge and github are equivalent, you are very mistaken.

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

#150

Post by pbiggar »

silverlake wrote: post #86
pbiggar wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,

I wouldn't consider any of these "innovations." Your definition implies successful == innovative. By that standard Justin Bieber's music is innovative and modern jazz is not.

I didnt just pick the successful ones, I went for the ones who changed the world in some way.
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