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Other challenges to SV’s preeminence are more fundamental than the tech diaspora

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Re: Other challenges to SV’s preeminence are more fundamental than the tech diaspora

#11

Post by onethought »

ping_pong wrote: post #5

Im so tired of random writers, even if it's O'Reilly himself, trying to predict that Silicon Valley is doomed. That's like saying Hollywood is doomed, or Wall Street is doomed. I've been around long enough to know that nothing will unseat Silicon Valley as the tech capital of the world. Silicon Valley has the critical mass of talent, VC money and greed that can't be replicated anywhere else in the world. There's a re…

> the best the world could do is China which just stole US ideas and then built a firewall to keep others out.

So where was WeChat and ubiquitous QR codes for everything stolen from? Silicon Valley still haven't figured out how to do Ubiquitous contactless payment... it's like going back in time every time I travel there, and I have to swipe a credit card and sign with a pen.

Or Taiwan's COVID/PPE Supply tracking system's?

Sorry... Silicon Valley is dying.

Re: Other challenges to SV’s preeminence are more fundamental than the tech diaspora

#12

Post by onethought »

ehnto wrote: post #8
onethought wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So open source was just tech people not understanding their core purpose of "extract value out of technology" ?

Open source is an entirely different movement. OSS is written the world over, yet SV is where everyone is busy extracting orders of magnitude of value from it. From plenty of experience, SV open sources because it provides a business advantage, because it costs them nothing or because it's part of the business model of OSS+Support. Individual contributors are the heroes here, people doing it for the love of the softw…

Oh really... So the open source code that contributed/drove the delivery of that comment wasn't written in SV?

edit: To the second part of your comment... so why are the browsers all open source (at least at their core)? What's the business advantage? The non-organisational contributors are hardly the "heroes" of those projects. And they have contributed a ridiculous amount of free value to world.

Re: Other challenges to SV’s preeminence are more fundamental than the tech diaspora

#14

Post by caslon »

High-profile entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, venture capitalists like Peter Thiel and Keith Rabois, and big companies like Oracle and HP Enterprise are all leaving California.

Oh wow! Larry Ellison, that one guy who lies about his cars putting literal lives at risk, a figurative vampire (infuses literal blood of young people into himself) and his thrall, and a company that hasn't been relevant since the 1970s all are leaving the Valley!

I don't even live there, and I never plan on living there, but they're not citing anyone all that meaningful. Larry Ellison is somehow the person who comes off the best out of that group! Larry Ellison! A guy who can best be described with a lawnmower metaphor! Come on!

And now a guy who corporatized free software to the point of it being completely unenforced and also coined Web 2.0 to sell you books is telling you to leave!

I'm skeptical about this "end" of the Valley, somehow. Almost seems like they're trying to get you to leave to devalue the price of real estate, scoop it up and then advocate once more for the Valley.

Re: Other challenges to SV’s preeminence are more fundamental than the tech diaspora

#16

Post by no_wizard »

onethought wrote: post #6

Isn't another growing/bigger centre for technology innovation now in China/Taiwan? Are we just pretending that Silicon Valley is still Mecca?

I think its fair to say that they're growing for sure, as the government and corporations have been investing there. What I feel makes Silicon Valley unique (backed by the history as I understand it) is the proximity of things

- The foundational organizations and proximity to an intense congregation of early innovation orgs, many of which started in Silicon Valley, or always had a large presence from the early days

- Proximity to a delta of good universities (large hiring pool, of ready to work post grads helps a lot)

- The incubation of VCs that despite many attempts to lure them, are still largely located in Silicon Valley

I think these over arching factors are the biggest reason Silicon Valley is unique. They're also not often talked about in this way very often in the 'mythos' of SV, but are very much the bedrock

It also doesn't make SV unique, per say (I think for medical device startups, states like Minnesota would be a good fit for your company, since they have a lot of investment in this area by multiple entities, as well as the same university graph so the pool of students you can hire is pretty good, and I feel this is pretty key to a lot of it)

Re: Other challenges to SV’s preeminence are more fundamental than the tech diaspora

#17

Post by ubertoop »

onethought wrote: post #11
ping_pong wrote: post #5

Im so tired of random writers, even if it's O'Reilly himself, trying to predict that Silicon Valley is doomed. That's like saying Hollywood is doomed, or Wall Street is doomed. I've been around long enough to know that nothing will unseat Silicon Valley as the tech capital of the world. Silicon Valley has the critical mass of talent, VC money and greed that can't be replicated anywhere else in the world. There's a re…

> the best the world could do is China which just stole US ideas and then built a firewall to keep others out. So where was WeChat and ubiquitous QR codes for everything stolen from? Silicon Valley still haven't figured out how to do Ubiquitous contactless payment... it's like going back in time every time I travel there, and I have to swipe a credit card and sign with a pen. Or Taiwan's COVID/PPE Supply tracking sys…

You've listed literally 4 things.

You can't really believe that compares to the innovations to come out of Silicon Valley, right?

Re: Other challenges to SV’s preeminence are more fundamental than the tech diaspora

#18

Post by raspasov »

gxs wrote: post #7
ping_pong wrote: post #5

Im so tired of random writers, even if it's O'Reilly himself, trying to predict that Silicon Valley is doomed. That's like saying Hollywood is doomed, or Wall Street is doomed. I've been around long enough to know that nothing will unseat Silicon Valley as the tech capital of the world. Silicon Valley has the critical mass of talent, VC money and greed that can't be replicated anywhere else in the world. There's a re…

I agree, but never say never. The Chinese will for sure have their own version of Silicon Valley and their giants will rival ours, no doubt. I think there will be other critical centers of tech innovation, similar to how Hollywood is Hollywood but NYC has an industry as well.

The fear of China "overtaking" the US is like the fear of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Real, but with no substance. A system built on top of paranoia is very unlikely to succeed.

Re: Other challenges to SV’s preeminence are more fundamental than the tech diaspora

#19

Post by baloney1 »

EGreg wrote: post #9

Until 1988, California was ruled largely by Republicans. Since 1988, it gradually cane to be ruled more by Democrats, with the notable exception of the "moderate" Republican governor Schwartzenegger. https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-pol-ca-california-voting... In both eras, its GDP and population went up, until it became the 5th or 4th largest economy in the world. A bit of mean reversion occurs, after massive spi…

Correlation does not imply causation, son.

Re: Other challenges to SV’s preeminence are more fundamental than the tech diaspora

#20

Post by gxs »

raspasov wrote: post #18
gxs wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but never say never. The Chinese will for sure have their own version of Silicon Valley and their giants will rival ours, no doubt. I think there will be other critical centers of tech innovation, similar to how Hollywood is Hollywood but NYC has an industry as well.

The fear of China "overtaking" the US is like the fear of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Real, but with no substance. A system built on top of paranoia is very unlikely to succeed.

No one said they would over take - merely they that are a formidable foe and will have a presence no doubt.

The kind of hubris in this thread tells me despite how asinine these articles are they hit HNs nerve.

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