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The anonymous Silicon Valley satire that has stumped tech world insiders

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Re: The anonymous Silicon Valley satire that has stumped tech world insiders

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bubble exists, but it's ludicrous to believe that SV startups don't have profound effects outside it. What % of people use Google, or Facebook, or Android/iOS every day in the west?

I think it's important to differentiate between the effects the products these companies create have, and the effects the companies themselves have on world/US culture. Clearly the products have had a profound impact on culture, but I think the impact would have been the same if they had been developed by Exxon or Halliburton. As far as the cultural impact of the companies themselves, I think it's been modest at best…

Completely agree. If these companies were impacting the culture as much as their products, entrepreneurship would be the career path dujour, but entrepreneurship rates are actually in decline.

Re: The anonymous Silicon Valley satire that has stumped tech world insiders

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize you are posting this using about 99% tech developed in the valley, right? I like the idea. Not sure if it will fly or not -- after all, once you've read one nerd-takes-the-world story, you've read them all. But we could do with a new genre.

What... Chrome and a Macbook? Yeah, that's certainly 99% of the tech necessary for me to be posting this.

As the norm, my comments were read too literally. The topic for this thread was the future of fiction, not the exact location where most technology was developed. "SV" in this case is just a plug-in. If it makes you feel any better, substitute Austin, or Redmond, or whatnot. The exact location is not important.

"Westerns" aren't all about things that happen in the western U.S. Star Trek was a western.

Re: The anonymous Silicon Valley satire that has stumped tech world insiders

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bubble exists, but it's ludicrous to believe that SV startups don't have profound effects outside it. What % of people use Google, or Facebook, or Android/iOS every day in the west?

I think it's important to differentiate between the effects the products these companies create have, and the effects the companies themselves have on world/US culture. Clearly the products have had a profound impact on culture, but I think the impact would have been the same if they had been developed by Exxon or Halliburton. As far as the cultural impact of the companies themselves, I think it's been modest at best…

> As far as the cultural impact of the companies themselves, I think it's been modest at best.

Parents staring at their phones instead of paying attention to kids.

Social networks and their impacts on relationships. Movies these days are unrealistic these days because so much important dialogue happens via WhatsApp, text messages and Facebook Messenger, etc.

Guess who will not be driving their own vehicles in 10 or 20 years? Consumers.

Re: The anonymous Silicon Valley satire that has stumped tech world insiders

#114
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't realize Bell Labs (Unix), Microsoft (Widndows), CERN (HTTP), and DARPA (TCP/IP) were based out of Silicon Valley.

He meant the really important ones like twitter and facebook and the other oft over-praised SV "tech".

Don't forget Flooz

Re: The anonymous Silicon Valley satire that has stumped tech world insiders

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What... Chrome and a Macbook? Yeah, that's certainly 99% of the tech necessary for me to be posting this.

As the norm, my comments were read too literally. The topic for this thread was the future of fiction, not the exact location where most technology was developed. "SV" in this case is just a plug-in. If it makes you feel any better, substitute Austin, or Redmond, or whatnot. The exact location is not important. "Westerns" aren't all about things that happen in the western U.S. Star Trek was a western.

That's a fair clarification - although I think there's a world of cultural difference between what people would describe as "SV" and "Non-SV" tech (By the latter, I don't mean running a TwitterForCats startup out of, say, Ohio.)

Re: The anonymous Silicon Valley satire that has stumped tech world insiders

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can either of them be truly considered "startups" anymore? And Facebook wasn't even invented in SV.

Well if you tautologically redefine "startups" to mean "as yet unsuccessful startups," then no I guess there isn't much effect outside the Valley bubble. But those companies all started small in the Valley and grew exponentially along the classic "tech startup" path.

I would think the poster child for startups are unicorns: Uber, AirBnB, Square, Tesla, etc. Google and Facebook are far too down the line to be considered the stereotypical SF or Palo Alto up-and-coming challenger.

Re: The anonymous Silicon Valley satire that has stumped tech world insiders

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Android and iOS phones? They might as well be any generic cheap Nokia, flavour du jour. Obviously not, or people wouldn't be spending hundreds of extra dollars to abandon their generic cheap Nokias in favor of Android and iOS.

Few consumers spend their discretionary income on Android and iOS phones for reasons related to intrinsic advantages of the platform themselves. They buy Android and iOS phones because those are the two platforms that propagated for what they actually seek: mobile devices. It could just as well have been Symbian and QNX, if competitive forces played out differently. But the whole point is that these goods are complet…

What are these "competitive forces" that aren't consumers choosing some platforms over others? iOS in particular wasn't jammed down consumers' throats; early adopters frequently had to jump carriers to get one, which forced carriers that didn't have the iPhone to accede to Apple's demands of them.

That Android and iOS won via some kind of accident of history is a fairly extraordinary claim, and requires some kind of actual evidence.

Re: The anonymous Silicon Valley satire that has stumped tech world insiders

#118
post #13

"We were promised flying cars and all we got was 140 characters" Peter Thiel I bet in Peter to be one of the authors of the book.

Peter seems a little too concrete for this type of project.

You are probably right, Peter is a more straight forward guy.

Re: The anonymous Silicon Valley satire that has stumped tech world insiders

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Few consumers spend their discretionary income on Android and iOS phones for reasons related to intrinsic advantages of the platform themselves. They buy Android and iOS phones because those are the two platforms that propagated for what they actually seek: mobile devices. It could just as well have been Symbian and QNX, if competitive forces played out differently. But the whole point is that these goods are complet…

What are these "competitive forces" that aren't consumers choosing some platforms over others? iOS in particular wasn't jammed down consumers' throats; early adopters frequently had to jump carriers to get one, which forced carriers that didn't have the iPhone to accede to Apple's demands of them. That Android and iOS won via some kind of accident of history is a fairly extraordinary claim, and requires some kind of…

That platforms win by consumer preference is a truism that need not be underlined. Android benefited from homogenization by the OHA consortium, and its licensing permitting extensive reproduction by off-the-shelf producers of varying production quality. iOS benefited from Apple's branding and cult following.

What's relevant is that most consumers do not evaluate software platforms from technical and system properties. They seek mobile devices for their end use, and will inevitably steer towards what already has large units stocked, what is advertised and what is recommended via word-of-mouth which will usually create reinforcing loops from consumer impressions caused by the former two. That is to say, the mobile OSes are substitutable goods. Which mobile OS prevails is of little relevance to most consumers, who seek means to ends and the nature of software is that the precise workings of these means are often obscure to them or otherwise not important provided ends (telephony, messaging, browsing, productivity apps, entertainment, or communication and consumption in general, etc.) are met.

For there were other platforms besides Android and iOS, and those would have evolved just the same and we would be speaking of some other location exerting cultural dominance. If it weren't Google, it could have been Altavista or something else. If it weren't Facebook, it could have been MySpace, Friendster or something else. Especially social networks are by definition something that critically depend on Metcalfe's law. Mobile platforms as well, to an extent (largely because apps that people want will converge to them). People do not care that they use Facebook or iOS, they want access to networks of contacts and to communicate with them through a consistent mechanism.

As such, you cannot argue that SV culture has dominated just by the fact of some product being influential alone, since it's a circular argument that ignores most such technologies are not pursued for the actual technological properties.

Re: The anonymous Silicon Valley satire that has stumped tech world insiders

#120
This was a really great essay, very funny. Before I jump in with the rest of you claiming "sv echo chamber", I'd like to point out that these tweets can be made to look like asshats and can be made out to be inspirational and telling of a the silicon valley mind set. These are the bourgeoisie that are looking for that perfect work/life balance and want to see future push forward, though usually by building really simple technologies. They have the opportunity to become senile or play with philosophy because they are doing everything in the power to bet big.

As much as this essay shows how alien their world is to my own, it also shows what successful marketing/operations people think about while pushing for success.

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