Silicon Valley's Problem

Meh.

The Silicon Valley rich are famously stingy philanthropists and a defense I’ve heard more than once is that the tools they spend their time building are inherently good. “Why donate money when people can just download my app and instantly have a better life?”

Maybe I have a different view on the this from most on HA as I live in Africa, but products like cheaper cellphones have had a far more massive effect for the masses than a few philanthropists donating some money to charities. Charities in general have almost no effect on the ground.

Charity is not the way to make the world better. The only way to make the world better is by building methods for more people to take part directly in the global economy - and as Americans are now realizing, this isn't necessarily going to be a good thing for Americans who will only gain more competition.

Love this:

Their goal is to make themselves as appealing—or threatening—to a big player as possible so they can get bought out for a few hundred million dollars and then devote the rest of their lives to a) building Burning Man installations, b) investing in other people’s widgets, or c) both. They really don’t care that much about making the world a better place, mostly because they feel like they don’t have to live in it.

At the D.C. TechMeetup groups you can always expect to have a public policy aspect to the tech offerings the problem is the majority of these fail. As someone who works in the government and is part of the start-up culture, I can tell you: these attempts are typically terrible at coming up with ways to blend tech and bureaucracy. I have no idea why. Well, not no idea. I think the main hurdles are as follows:

1. The people who make the best change in industries or start-ups are people who have been working in it a while.

2. Few people who have worked in government are the types to become high-growth entrepreneurs. They exist but in general the mindsets are reciprocals.

3. It takes a long time (in start-up time) to understand how a federal/state/local government does things. Anyone who wants to make a mark from the outside isn't going to identify a problem/solution efficiently. So anyone who has a real solution has likely been in government for 5-10 years and is established in a comfortable position - not likely to break out. Not only that they probably have schooling in something political science-y/history/etc.. versus math/CS/physics

4. As a general rule, it takes a long time (infinitely long in start-up time) to actually get a federal/state/local government to implement anything. Part of this is by design and the other part is incompetence or ignorance because they have...

5. Really really poor understanding of how to implement technology. For example $25,000 for a shitty 4 page web 1.0 government website because that is what was budgeted and Booz Allen took the contract because...

6. ...they promised to make the whole thing comply with the IT requirements (ie: IE7 is the most recent browser) and security requirements.

So yea. It's kind of hard to solve tech problems for the government. Even moreso, having whole programs handed over from the government to a bunch of 18-30 year old's who haven't made all the right friends and gone to the right schools.

I think she has a point about bubble that Silicon Valley and SF lives in.

Where I think she misses the boat is that the solution isn't to lobby government. Rather people need to remember the world outside the bubble so they can see real problems to work on, rather than the latest cool X-sharing (yes it's a cliche but still true) app to brag about in front of their friends in the coffee shop.

Many of the real ground breaking startups are not coming from the bay area nowadays for exactly these reasons.

Cell phones may have done more for international development than charity, but that's a great example of improving things by accident rather than by design.

I moved to the Bay Area to start a startup, before which I worked on international development issues, and having seen both sides of the coin, I totally agree with the author's views.

It would be great if we could harness some of our technological expertise to engage directly with the world's problems, starting at the problems rather than our own individual itches. This is something I personally intend to do in the future, and I would love to engage with others that are interested in doing so too.

In fact, a few years ago, my co-founder and I thought about doing something for-impact rather than for-profit, and we volunteered with Khan Academy (when they didn't have funding), but quickly found that you can't do a great job on something unless it's the main thing you're working on (PG's "top idea in your mind" concept totally applies).

One great example of using technology for social change is SamaSource [http://samasource.org] — I'm a huge fan of their work and the founder's politics.

Let me add my perspective as an Indian living in the SF bay area, spending about 20-25% of my time in India. The poverty of India is inescapable, it is everywhere around you. The reason I got into business, particularly business in India, ultimately is that in my mid-20's I found myself simply very depressed about this, and decided that business was the only way I could make a real difference. I was inspired by the examples of Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan and similar places, which went from miserable third world poverty to middle income prosperity within about 30 years.

About charity, in the here and now, when you are surrounded by such need that you see all around you in India (I personally know hundreds of stories), small and local acts of charity are very necessary and helpful.

At the same time, I do not believe that charity can work on any kind of large scale. First, given the vastness and diversity of India, it is impossible for any one person to know more than a small fraction of India. With that said, I firmly believe that the part of India that I am familiar with - the Southern part accounting for about 25% of Indian population - could have been a Taiwan or South Korea or Southern China, if only the Indian government had pursued a relatively sane economic policy. No I am not complaining about corruption and so on - South Korea or China did not develop because they had enlightened, corruption-free governments. Even today, Indian economic policy is miserably wrong-headed. It hurts the very poor the most, but our political class is simply oblivious to it.

One example would suffice: today, the second largest textile exporter in the world, after China, is Bangladesh. With all the political turmoil, corrupt government and so on, Bangladesh has made more progress in lifting its poorest citizens than India, and the 3 million textile industry jobs are a primary reason. Why couldn't India do it? Policy, in one word. Textile industry is the classic climb-the-ladder industry. China is just about ready to vacate the lowest rungs of the ladder, and Bangladesh is getting on it. India's poorest are still waiting.

To summarize, I believe in charity-in-the-small, in the here and now, but large scale economic development, lifting hundreds of millions of poverty in India (which accounts for most of the world's poor) needs something different.

TLDR: "What if, instead of imploring people to vote on Facebook’s privacy policies, we were pushing Florida lawmakers into fixing the state’s broken voting system? ... Why can’t we, the tech community, figure out how to harness our talent and influence to fundamentally change the way our democracy works — not just for us, when it suits our interests, but for everyone?"

It surely is embarrassing that California's two senators were strong supporters of PIPA and that they are still in office. Silicon Valley is sending a strong message - "Mess with us, and we'll be very angry for about 4 days. Then we'll go back to trying to get rich."

If the Tea Party could throw out dozens of fiscal moderate Republicans from the Congressional caucus, surely we - the technically savvy citizens of Silicon Valley - can play the political game and win?

It's easy to talk about using political power for good purposes when you don't have it yet.

If Silicon Valley actually tried to become a political force, it might discover that the tech community doesn't agree on what the nation's most important problems are. Or that there is little correlation between the ability to make a lot of money putting advertisements on people's screens and the ability to find practical solutions to complex social problems. Or that the rest of the country doubts the goodness of its motives.

My impression is that the tech culture pervading SV is built on a foundation of decentralized problem solving on a global scale, finding people who share an interest in the solution to some problem they're faced with, and working towards that solution with them. Intermediaries such as NGOs and governing bodies are not valued, because their operation isn't transparent or accessible. National borders and the government agencies they contain are becoming increasingly irrelevant as we are able to work and play with people regardless of locality, and the influence of national organizations is seen as a liability for more global-minded projects. The author seems to place a great deal of faith and value in institutions which have failed to keep pace with the workings of modern human society.

Reading between the lines it sounds like the author is just struggling with the amoral nature of most businesses. Superficially company mission statements and slogans may appear to contradict this assertion, but they are best guidelines rather than constitutional legislation. At least in Tech as a creator you can find a path within your job to generate something meaningful if at worst only for personal / technical pride.

Personally, I cordially dislike most attempts by corporate (and entertainment) celebrities to influence domains outside their primary interest. It's easier to appreciate Bill Gates as a full time philanthropist than Bono the singer and part time pamphleteer.

So, as I read through the comments on this post I see a lot of indifference to her argument and a lot of anger toward the government. Government is broken. Government uses outdated, bespoke technology from the 90s. Technology is not a priority. Government is inefficient. (I could say the same things about much of the not-for-profit community as well). Those are all true, but that's partially because the exact people in Silicon Valley who are capable of bringing expertise to the table are not willing to. Government's so broken it is not worth fixing is exactly the attitude that ensures that government continues to be broken. There aren't many people who live in the Valley who ask themselves how they could give back or improve society with the skills they have.

For example, there was just a search conducted for a new CIO of San Francisco--what would that position look like if one well-qualified engineering manager from HN left their job at Google or Facebook, sucked it up and dove in? I'll tell you what would happen--a lot of good stuff for our city and our society. I'm currently in the civic tech community of practice nationally (Today is perhaps the last day I can claim that, more on that below), and there aren't enough people who “get” it who are willing to work in government, but that's exactly the problem that needs to be solved. The person I know who is doing the most innovative work in civic technology is Brett Goldstein, the CIO of Chicago, who use to be the head of IT Services at OpenTable before becoming a beat cop, director of analytics for Chicago Police, Chief Data Officer of Chicago, and now CIO.[1]

Lets take another view of this point--there is to my knowledge no software developer in Congress. That seems like a problem to me and one that comes from the fact, perhaps, that developers are less likely to throw themselves in to politics in their 40s because of a lack of expertise. That doesn't seem to stop lawyers and other businesspeople though. I think we would be having a slightly different national conversation about technology, innovation, the internet and even the very methods by which we solve problems in our society (for the better) if some Silicon Valley folks sucked it up and got a little more involved in politics or, you know, in improving the lives of poor people. The I AM a geek campaign.

(By the way, I'm inherently skeptical of Ron Conway's Sf.Citi, which is basically a glorified lobbying organization against the payroll tax in SF. But, having said that, I think the attitude could be useful. I've heard it said by a few Silicon Valley billionaires that they don't want to give money to, for example, education because they don't know anything about education. What they know is how to build software products. Since that's so, why can't we come up with software products as philanthropy rather than give up on giving back [2]).

I think some of the passion is there but there needs to be new ways to focus that energy collectively. Just as an example, I co-founded Datakind (formerly Data Without Borders), which matches pro bono data science capacity from people who work at, for example, Google or Bit.ly, with not-for-profits that have defined data science needs and projects. The hard part here was not in finding the data science capacity--tons of people volunteered--or the not-for-profits--tons of them have signed up--but in the interface between the two. That's why the organization needs to exist, but it also points to the fact that the ecosystem of doers in Silicon Valley should give some thought of how to act as a community to bridge those gaps and provide support and help beyond the peninsula.

Lastly, as a personal note, I am keenly interested in this whole thing. Today is my last day as Senior Tech Policy adviser to Newark, NJ Mayor Cory Booker. I am starting next week at Stripe. The more I have worked on civic technology, the more I realized I wished I knew more about and had experience in technology in the private-sector. I feel like a sort of false prophet — one who had read about revelation but who has never experienced it himself. But my passion is in and around using technology to innovate in the civic space, particularly within government. I feel the best long-term play to do that is to work at an engineering-focused, growing, tech company for a few years. Then I can tack back to civic tech--because innovation rarely comes from people who are too far down the rabbit hole of any field. I can likely come back to civic tech after working in the private sector but there are only a few years (without a wife/partners and kids) where I am willing to work my ass off at a startup.

I mention all this about my own life to say that although government is hard and addressing societal problems is hard it's only by choosing to care that we can make a difference. That sounds corny, but if government is broken and you're an expert at revolutionizing business process, why don't you spend a few years working on it. I am not suggesting that everyone organize their life as I have, but if you really cared about the hardest problems you could find why isn’t addressing civic and social problems on your list?

[1] cf. https://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/doit/auto_genera..., http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/mayor/press_room/..., http://magazine.uchicago.edu/1102/arts_sciences/byte-cop.sht...

[2] I take a crack at one, not particularly modest, suggestion on this at http://www.ash.harvard.edu/Home/Programs/Innovations-in-Gove...

One of the most perceptive posts on Silicon Valley I have read in a long time. Very spot on.

I spent a few months there and I think the post touches on a lot of truths. I found the place to be pretty unreal - an idyllic and unique slice of America, both in a good and bad kind of way.

The good part is that there's a lot of energy and optimism there, a great openness to new ideas and a general sense of building the future. I think this is the part that attracts people and allows for new companies to take hold and grow big.

The bad part is expressed as a kind of refusal to engage with the rest of society. The analogy I would make is when one is building a company - the easiest part is to put on some headphones and start coding, it is most geeks' comfort zone. But that's only part of it, you also have to do engage with your users, do support, get the word about about your product and a myriad of other things that are not pleasant but absolutely necessary.

Likewise, doing your own thing out west is very appealing and comfortable, but do get anything done you have to engage in the dirty, messy, horse-trading cacophony that is politics. The tech industry for example is notable for not having any significant lobbying capacity in Washington.

Silicon Valley != San Francisco. In fact, the idea of San Francisco being a part of Silicon Valley is a very recent one. The article makes some good points. But if you're going to write about Silicon Valley, the first thing you must do is understand what it is.

The underpinning idea in US governance is the idea that if you don't like the society you live in you can build a new one a little further out west.

Until seasteading becomes feasible SF/the internet is as west as it gets. Amazingly, or unsurprisingly to libertarians, we can build our own society with out government telling us what to do.

What is wrong with people solving their own problems rather than lobbying government to provide a half-assed solution for them?

Frankly, it's rude to go to Washington and tell them how to live their lives, they can see how others live and decide for themselves whether they want to operate that way.

Actually, that is exactly why I like SV.

It's about the ecosystem, not the players. The kind of problems the author talks about are offshoots in an ecosystem that is built to develop and sustain massively huge ideas. This is not only expected but required to keep ecosystem healthy. Can you imagine if there were no such companies and only 15 ideal ones? It would make for a very unhealthy startup land because startup is about trying new things, ideal or not.

Page reads vastly better without the background images (and then with anchor color set to something other than white).

1997 called, it wants its page designer back.

I really enjoyed this post, and I have a few reactions to it.

The author is lobbying for online advocacy, which I hate to say, will not be fruitful without some kind of major political shift in our country's political processes and institutions. Our two-party system doesn't allow for a member of congress to suddenly say "I'm going to let my constituents decide how I vote on each bill." I'm sure it angers some when I say this, (I only mean to state a fact,) but the real way to make an impact is through lobbying. SOPA and PIPA were amazing, yes, but time has proven that their impact cannot be replicated. When it comes to internet regulations, the bigger players in Silicon Valley have already started to realize this and opened a lobby shop in DC. http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/250205-i...

My second point is that because our government is so broken already, it makes it even harder for citizens to have an active say in how it operates and the decisions it makes. Even the White House realizes this, but they don't have the power to change this overnight. However, their steps forward have been in the right direction; Obama created the "Chief Technology Officer" position and appointed Todd Park, an extremely accomplished entrepreneur, to the role. http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/03/09/todd-park-named-ne... (Disclosure: I'm a Presidential Innovation Fellow in a program that Todd heads up.) Bringing government technology into the 21st century is something that will benefit every American citizen by allowing government to beter serve him or her.

Finally, I want to stress that the onus to create change is not entirely on Silicon Valley. Tim O'Reilly, in one of his essays, has a great chapter entitled "Government as a Platform". http://ofps.oreilly.com/titles/9780596804350/defining_govern... Until our government moves beyond Open Data and to full read/write APIs, there is a significant limit to how we can interface with it. Most government information systems are only accessible via web portals built in the 90s. Think about it... if your internal business tools were restricted to software built in 1995, how productive would your organization be? And we're not talking about the best software of the era, we're talking about custom-off-the-shelf pieces of crap, built by huge government contractors who make most of their money by launching satellites and building tanks.

So if there's an overarching point to my post, it's that the problem is much more nuanced than just "Silicon Valley doesn't care." Changing that apathy, though, is still a good first step.

This post sucks. There are a lot of reasons for sucking, such as describing a non-problem. That's not this posts problem. This posts problem is that it describes a very real problem, and then basically throws up it's hands in defeat. That's actually worse than not saying anything at all, as it leaves the reader upset, but with no balm for the wound.

Thanks for wounding me and not giving me a bandage. Or, as I've heard it put, "If you're going to show someone a pile of shit, you better also show them the shovel."

So, taking my own medicine, here's the shovel for a post like this: stop writing posts describing problems that you have no ability, no ideas, and no real capability to solve. Otherwise you're just indulging in self-centered, self-hating navel gazing which does absolutely nothing for the world. I realize that sounds harsh, but it's a useful filter to apply to yourself. Only share actionable anxieties.

There is no Silicon Valley problem.

She assumes that everyone shares her progressive/leftist view of government.

Why is it Silicon Valley's responsibility to "fix government" and not hers?

The solution to the SV problem is not to lobby the government or to try to set up some libertarian outpost in the desert.

Just move out of SV. The air is different outside of SV. People don't care about apps, or financing rounds, or VCs.

Want a truly different perspective? Move to Detroit, a struggling city with a half-abandoned core, or to Akron, a former industrial megapower that hasn't been relevant in decades. In both cities, new manufacturing technologies and/or processes are needed to vitalize their local industries. In the Central Valley cities of Fresno and Merced, water and air quality concerns impact both the quality of life and the strength of one of California's primary industries. In the southwest, access to water will be the ultimate arbiter of growth in the decades to come. These are all real problems, but they're not problems that you'd ever come across in SV.

That's why I am now here.

I'm starting with bringing dyslexic fonts to peoples' awareness (my blog is always rendered in Eulexia), and then moving on to building dragons ( http://nerdfiles.net/rattelyr-dragon/ ).