MIT Tech Review Says It Proves Silicon Valley Innovation Is a Myth | Hacker News Reader

MIT Tech Review Says It Proves Silicon Valley Innovation Is a Myth

techdirt.com

32 pointscaution10 comments

From the review

>Sure, they have given us Zoom to keep the fortunate among us working and Netflix to keep us sane; Amazon is a savior these days for those avoiding stores; iPads are in hot demand and Instacart is helping to keep many self-isolating people fed.

But what have the Romans ever done for us!

From the commentary:

> Of course, even the paragraph that explains the thesis seems almost like a modern updating of the famous "what have the Romans ever done for us?" scene from Monty Python's Life of Brian

ROMANES EUNT DOMUS

The original title should have been left in: "As We're All Living, Working, And Socializing Via The Internet... MIT Tech Review Says It Proves Silicon Valley Innovation Is A Myth"

Probably too long. Very difficult to crop titles to fit HN limit.

I think I can understand a kernel of what is being suggested here and I think its based on the idea of proportion. Silicon Valley represents the largest aggregations of human and financial capital ever seen, but for all of that investment and energy how much do we have to show aside from a video chat app and e-commerce? I'm not arguing for or against but just trying to understand some part of the sentiment in the context of a crisis.

Iphones are by far the most impactful invention of the past 2 decades, to the point where many other globally impactful things like Uber are built entirely on top of them and their clones. I don't think there's any informed way to understand the perspective; it just can't come from anything but blindness about what Silicon Valley has accomplished.

If it weren't for video chat and e-commerce, we couldn't have even contemplated shutting down so many businesses and pushing people to work from home. None of this would have happened.

We can't innovate against the corrupt administrators over federal agencies that are incompetent to the point of cruelty. We can't innovate against a population that has been brainwashed into distrusting scientists and experts. We can't innovate against governors that are too chickenshit to get us the resources we need or deploy our solutions the way they need to be.

The problems with our response to COVID are not technological, they're institutional.

I would not necessarily worry a whole lot about anything I read in Tech Review.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com