Comment by balajis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by balajis | Hacker News Reader

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One of the speakers here. I found the online reaction to my talk pretty interesting as a case study in internet telephone. Here's the talk itself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A

First party viewers mostly seemed to like it:

http://seen.co/event/startup-school-2013-cupertino-ca-2013-6...

CNET gave a second party writeup:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57608320-93/a-radical-dream...

Then third party people started mischaracterizing it:

http://valleywag.gawker.com/silicon-valleys-ultimate-exit-is...

Finally, the Hill wrote a fourth party account, quoting these third party accounts, and that's what Washington DC saw:

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/state-a-local-politics...

Not everyone got it wrong; I think this account is closer:

http://www.randomhouse.ca/hazlitt/blog/virtual-expatriates-a...

But I encourage you to open up those tabs and go through them one by one to see a kind of pinball reflection of the tone of the talk. In microcosm it's an example of the emerging gap between Silicon Valley and DC, and gives a sense of how policy makers can inadvertently form their opinions from echoes of echoes. Doubly ironic and somewhat sad as we can use the internet to make direct connections between people these days. The good thing is that interested parties can see the primary source directly.

I was at Startup School and enjoyed your talk as it gave me some new ideas to think about.

I also worked in media for a time and I think the mischaracterizations in the "third-hand" accounts are less about an emerging gap and more about the huge market for time-waster content on the web.

Valleywag mischaracterized your talk because someone at Valleywag is paid to write half a dozen "pieces" a day that will appeal to a certain audience. Intentionally mischaracterizing things and blowing things out of proportion is necessary to meeting the daily quota of articles.

I think this chain of articles is particularly interesting to follow because it neatly illustrates how different the audiences are: the articles neatly show both what the audience wants to hear and what it actually hears. This is a property of blogs in general: they can measure the impact of any given article far more than newspapers, so less popular views can't ride the coattails of more popular ones. This creates a pretty direct feedback loop: blogs write more of what people want and, to an extent, people want more of what blogs write.

Also, reading some of these articles really illustrated your point about blame--it seems the writers are more than ready to play an "us vs game" them with "privileged technocrats" or a "techno-utopian clique" against the implicit common man in the audience. Instead of comparing ideals and ideas, it focuses on people behind the ideas and their perceived arrogance. This is particularly annoying because arrogance seems disproportionately harshly judged by society.

I read it as a game of Operator in service of other'ing[1] by the status quo.

1. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Other

Prof. Srinivasan:

While I thought your talk was interesting (and I really dig all the great work Counsyl is doing), it sounded like a 13 year old who just discovered Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" for the first time and thought they had everything figured out. Your Silicon Valley neoliberalism is nothing new.

Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron predicted this back in 1995 in their essay, The Californian Ideology: "Their politics appear to be impeccably libertarian - they want information technologies to be used to create a new 'Jeffersonian democracy' in cyberspace where every individual would be able to express themselves freely. Implacable in its certainties, the Californian Ideology offers a fatalistic vision of the natural and inevitable triumph of the hi-tech free market - a vision which is blind to racism, poverty and environmental degradation and which has no time to debate alternatives."

The original California Ideology Essay published in 1995: http://w7.ens-lyon.fr/amrieu/IMG/pdf/Californian_ideology_Mu...

Kevin Kelly on The California Ideology: http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2011/07/the_californi...

"That Deep Romantic Chasm": Libertarianism, Neoliberalism, and the Computer Culture by Thomas Streeter http://www.uvm.edu/~tstreete/romantic_chasm.html

Balaji, you were far and away my favorite talk at Startup School. I took CS184 on Coursera and it was more valuable than my entire undergraduate education. Thank you.

I agree with the vast majority of your points. Didn't even bother to look at the broken-telephone links. Why bother.

What you are talking about sound very much like what's covered in The Innovator's Dilema [0].

I am not entirely sure I understand your position with regards to government. It seems you are suggesting the only way to evolve things is to "exit". I took this as perhaps going to the extent of physically relocating to a country where what you want is either accepted or already there. You gave the example of your parents. As the son of immigrants I too have similar examples. Can you clarify this point?

There's a huge divide between Washington's understanding of the ever-evolving world of technology and that reality. Watching the various layers of Washington discuss what they perceive to be the issue with the ACA website is proof enough of that.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-B...

Part of the talk was to contrast voice and exit. I don't think the point was that exit is the only way to evolve government; rather, exit is often the best way to create significant change, get out of deadlock or try less popular ideas. Voice (eg voting) is still an option.

Moreover, physically leaving the country is not the only way to "exit". Another example was Bitcoin--a currency that the government may not even be able to fully regulate! The internet and BitTorrent are more popular examples. So technological innovation can also help create an exit, and is perhaps more appropriate for "Sillicon Valley".

Agreed 100% then.

What's happening to us and other societies is exactly the innovators dilema. It is beyond obvious that, in the case of the US at least, what has worked well for the last 237 years is coming to an end. The divide you mention in your talk between tech and Washington is hurting not only us but, in my opinion, the rest of the world as well.

Frankly it is hard to imagine anything that might compell our society to change quickly enough. In my view the natural consequence of this effect is that any other society smart enough to embrace change could easily position itself to lead the world into whatever form the next world order might take. If in 100 or 200 years we still have countries, poverty, ignorance and war humanity will have failed miserably.

Your talk reminded me of the recent BBC interview with Russell Brand where he talks about how he doesn't vote because he feels like the only way to change the system is to not participate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLYcn3PuTTk

I don't really get the "I'm indifferent so I don't vote" argument. If you're really indifferent you might as well vote as the downside is minimal, while the downside if you're wrong is quite large e.g. someone is manipulating you into not voting. Sometimes the only way to be rational is to act irrationally.

I think it stems from the belief that both political parties are essentially the same so by voting you are lending legitimacy to the system you view as broken. Think about how when they hold elections in de facto dictatorships how they always tout high voter turn out.

In, for instance, US presidential elections, unless you live in one of maybe 3 to 5 states the probability of your voting affecting the outcome of the race significantly is near nil.

However I still vote, just to show pollsters what support exists for my (very) minority political positions. Or at list as close as I can get to them with the few minority candidates that make it onto the ballots.

In my opinion, your talk was the most interesting (and unexpected). You did a great job.

I want your idea so desperately to become a reality, and we're so, so close. Like a tech world of the best hackers and geeks contracted by the outside.

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