Comment by amb23 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by amb23 | Hacker News Reader

The lineage of technological progress does not follow the same path as commercial development of a pre-existing technology applied to a pre-existing market. We need to be careful not to equate the two. As much as a D2C brand or SaaS startup may brilliantly bring a new market innovation to the fore, they rarely bring new technological innovations--and the potential to expand the pie rather than extract market value--with them. Technological progress is a halting, stop-and-start process, and the market isn't always welcoming to it even in cases when the economics of the innovation make sense. So, yes--if you're working on truly progressive technology, take this sense of purpose the author speaks of to heart. But tech as an industry shouldn't appropriate this purpose when it cannot follow through on it.

I respectfully disagree. New technologies don't intrinsically expand the pie, lowering the price/performance ratio does. D2C and SAAS lower the cost of distribution which historically been a significant markup on goods. The consumer pays less and thus have more money to spend on other goods and services. Therefore the pie expands.

Examples of technologies failing to change price/performance:

1) Self driving cars: can you replace people working for less than minimum wage with the expensive hardware and liability related costs? Eventually yes but even airplanes are struggling and that is a far easier problem.

The counter example might be closer to Tesla's auto pilot.

2) DC electrical grid (as implemented by Edison): expensive to transmit over distance relative to AC.

3) Fuel cell cars: the platinum catalysts drove up the price. (There were other factors as well).

Examples of technologies succeeding to change price/performance:

1) Light bulb: factories could be productive even at night. Since most of the costs were fixed, getting more productivity was invaluable.

2) CPU's: Moore's law

3) Solar: Manufacturing costs were the real obstacle, and improved manufacturing and economies of scale led to an economically viable product.

I don't claim to be perfectly right about all these cases but I think they illustrate the gist of what I'm saying.

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