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Every tech downturn has a silver lining

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Re: Every tech downturn has a silver lining

#11

Post by troughway »

After scrolling about 200vh or so for no good reason.

>I remember feeling under a pall of gloom, going about with a dark cloud over my soul and tears in my eyes.

A little bit melodramatic, but okay.

>The disparity between America’s haves and have-nots has been laid bare. The inefficiency of our legislators has made us the laughing stock of the planet (so much so that an opinion writer at the Irish Times even felt pity for America).

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, even The Irish Times.

>Slack co-founder Stewart Butterfield might be a household name today

Other comments covered this nonsense.

>To be clear, those being laid off are previously pampered full-time employees and not the gig workers who are treated as disposables by these big companies.

> Yes, the future is unknown and it is worrying, but pause for a minute and think about what the future of work looks like: less peer pressure and office politics, less need to run around looking pretty or showing up to show you’re there no need to chase crazy trends and shiny objects, and a lot less emphasis on working just to make sure people see you working.

The latter statement can only apply to the former if the "You" is a "pampered full-time employee". Because I doubt the "gig workers" have seen what office politics look like.

So then, what's the point of this statement?

Rest of the article tries to imagine a future that ignores evolutionary biology, the need for people to connect through more than just a virtual presence, and proclaims we live in the past.

Lastly the "have and have nots" bullshit tirade is nicely wrapped up by the author mentioning they're an angel investor for Slack.

Re: Every tech downturn has a silver lining

#12

Post by saagarjha »

imprettycool wrote: post #8
bawolff wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack is certainly more well known than its founder, but neither are household names unless you live in silicon valley. As an example, have you ever watched a movie where someone uses slack? I haven't. Have you ever seen a movie where someone uses google (or some rebranded website that's obviously a google stand-in)? Of course you have. That's what a household name is. Edit: also if it was rephrased that way the rest…

you are being very pedantic

Not really.

Re: Every tech downturn has a silver lining

#13

Post by bawolff »

troughway wrote: post #11

After scrolling about 200vh or so for no good reason. >I remember feeling under a pall of gloom, going about with a dark cloud over my soul and tears in my eyes. A little bit melodramatic, but okay. >The disparity between America’s haves and have-nots has been laid bare. The inefficiency of our legislators has made us the laughing stock of the planet (so much so that an opinion writer at the Irish Times even felt pit…

Oh, the author is an angel investor in slack! I guess that explains the household name thing. I was originally just assuming some extreme version of living in the silicon valley filter bubble.

Re: Every tech downturn has a silver lining

#15

Post by wnevets »

bawolff wrote: post #3

> Slack co-founder Stewart Butterfield might be a household name today, but in 2001 'Kay. Maybe in your household. Is this really a tech downturn? Yes, some companies are laying people off, with gig-economy things particularly hard hit, but the entire economy is a mess right now. It doesn't seem like tech is relatively more affected than other industries. I do agree with the general premise that a bubble bursting is…

>'Kay. Maybe in your household.

I've used slack everyday for years and I have no idea who the founders are. I'll probably forget Stewart's name by tomorrow morning.

Re: Every tech downturn has a silver lining

#16

Post by gkoberger »

bawolff wrote: post #7
gkoberger wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be better worded as "Slack, co-founded by Stewart Butterfield, might be a household name today, but in 2001[...]"

Slack is certainly more well known than its founder, but neither are household names unless you live in silicon valley. As an example, have you ever watched a movie where someone uses slack? I haven't. Have you ever seen a movie where someone uses google (or some rebranded website that's obviously a google stand-in)? Of course you have. That's what a household name is. Edit: also if it was rephrased that way the rest…

I think, for the sake of this article, you could consider Slack a household name. It doesn't mean everyone has heard of it, it just means "well-known". It's a publicly traded company, and I'd say the average person (especially in America) likely knows what it is.

I guess I don't really watch many movies that delve into 21st-century office communication, but I imagine if I did their chat app would be modeled after Slack.

Overall, though, this is a minor point compared to the rest of the article.

Re: Every tech downturn has a silver lining

#17

Post by bawolff »

> My bet is always-on broadband. Virtual worlds, digital entertainment, gaming …. None of it would be possible without broadband. Today, we have about 100-250 Mbps in most modern homes. In some places, you can get a gigabit per second. Now imagine what we could do if, in ten years, we all have 10 gigabits per second in our homes, and we have in-home networks that are fast and fat.

Hmm. Kind of an interesting take. I predict the opposite. I think we have hit the diminishing returns on bandwidth. People don't even know what to do with residential internet in the 100mbps. We can stream HD video (both up and down)...what else is there. If there are no applications straining at bandwidth limits now, im not sure improving them will make new products. If anything i think the best gains are going to be in latency and in mobile bandwidth. Cheap high speed, no data cap, internet for cell phones would be pretty great. But still i'd consider that incremental. I think its unlikely the next big technology enabler will be the same as the last one.

> In 2001, we imagined a 100 Mbps future — and we got Google, a nearly trillion-dollar company.

Google was founded in 1998, and that was still the dial-up era. At the time, I was probably thinking a 1mbps future sounded pretty grand and couldn't imagine 100mbps. Heck my internet right now isn't even that fast.

Re: Every tech downturn has a silver lining

#18

Post by esoterica »

gkoberger wrote: post #16
bawolff wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack is certainly more well known than its founder, but neither are household names unless you live in silicon valley. As an example, have you ever watched a movie where someone uses slack? I haven't. Have you ever seen a movie where someone uses google (or some rebranded website that's obviously a google stand-in)? Of course you have. That's what a household name is. Edit: also if it was rephrased that way the rest…

I think, for the sake of this article, you could consider Slack a household name. It doesn't mean everyone has heard of it, it just means "well-known". It's a publicly traded company, and I'd say the average person (especially in America) likely knows what it is. I guess I don't really watch many movies that delve into 21st-century office communication, but I imagine if I did their chat app would be modeled after Sla…

I think the average white collar worker at a company with a trendy software stack knows what slack is, but that’s like 5% of the population. The average American definitely does not know what Slack is.

Re: Every tech downturn has a silver lining

#19

Post by oap »

gkoberger wrote: post #16
bawolff wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack is certainly more well known than its founder, but neither are household names unless you live in silicon valley. As an example, have you ever watched a movie where someone uses slack? I haven't. Have you ever seen a movie where someone uses google (or some rebranded website that's obviously a google stand-in)? Of course you have. That's what a household name is. Edit: also if it was rephrased that way the rest…

I think, for the sake of this article, you could consider Slack a household name. It doesn't mean everyone has heard of it, it just means "well-known". It's a publicly traded company, and I'd say the average person (especially in America) likely knows what it is. I guess I don't really watch many movies that delve into 21st-century office communication, but I imagine if I did their chat app would be modeled after Sla…

The average person definitely doesn't know. I've met wealthy people in their 20s in LA who don't know who Elon Musk is. Attention is hyper fractionalized.

People know who Jeff Bezos is, people don't know Tim Cook.

Re: Every tech downturn has a silver lining

#20

Post by bryanrasmussen »

bawolff wrote: post #7
gkoberger wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be better worded as "Slack, co-founded by Stewart Butterfield, might be a household name today, but in 2001[...]"

Slack is certainly more well known than its founder, but neither are household names unless you live in silicon valley. As an example, have you ever watched a movie where someone uses slack? I haven't. Have you ever seen a movie where someone uses google (or some rebranded website that's obviously a google stand-in)? Of course you have. That's what a household name is. Edit: also if it was rephrased that way the rest…

I worked on the Danish government electronic invoicing project, and lots of people at the time I hung out with, being government people, knew what it was.

About a decade later I worked on the JavaScript implementation of NemID, NemID being a security thing in Denmark that basically every citizen has to use.

A coworker said to me (paraphrasing): "It's great to work on NemID, because everyone knows what it is, so it's easy to explain at family dinners" which is true. very true, everyone knows in Denmark what it is.

To which I thoughtlessly replied "Oh yes, it was the same when I worked on eFaktura", his face got the momentarily shocked and dismayed expression people get when they realize they are talking to a crazy person or an idiot.

About 5 minutes later I thought to myself "what the hell are you thinking, nobody knows what eFaktura is, fool"

I think the household name status of Slack or the guy who co-founded it is sort of like the household name status of eFaktura in Denmark.

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