Hacker News Reader

Comment by mattzito | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

> 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.

But Exxon or Halliburton couldn't have developed these products. They wouldn't even try and fail to develop these kinds of products.

I think your missing the point. The idea is that it didn't really matter who made the product; it was the product itself that had the "profound impact on culture".

The product and the company that created it cannot be separated in terms of origination. The product required those specific inputs to exist. As such, it was the company that created the profound impact on the culture. To remove that connection is to pretend the product could have been created by any given corporation and corporate culture.

Maybe the difference is more subtle than I thought. The culture of a company like Google may be very tolerant and open, it may value self-actualization and support of individuality. This culture could be critical to the creation of Google products, like Search and GMail. It could even be said that products like Search and GMail could _only_ have been created by a company with the cultural values that Google possesses. Other organizations with different cultures may not even have been able to understand enough about how these products work to even try to produce them.

I believe the question is: "Do the cultural values of a company like Google impact the values (or culture) of their customers through their use of Google's products?"

I would argue that no, they do not. People want to find out where they can buy the cheapest dog food or recipes for something they need to cook. For sure, Google's may present articles that they might not otherwise see, but that's as far as I believe this goes; this other content need not be consistent with Google's values (very often it isn't). Ditto with GMail, I wouldn't think the culture of Google, as expressed through GMail, will make much of an impact on their customers at large.

But traditional/non-SV companies can and do change the world with products all the time. IBM was a massive company when they created the PC. VW invented the beetle (and reinvented it). Vanguard changed the world of investing.

None of these were SV startups with all the stereotypes that accrue to them. It's true that it's harder for big companies to innovate, but you can't say, "Only SV startups build products that change the world, ergo SV startups change world culture"

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.

> 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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com