Silicon Valley Needs to Lose the Arrogance or Risk Destruction
wired.com
wired.com
>>> In advancing their case that Silicon Valley’s profits only benefit the few, critics often note the structural advantage of tech companies, which allows them to build massive businesses with tiny workforces. (In December, Twitter flirted with a valuation of $50 billion despite having just 2,300 employees, while Dow Chemical, worth a similar amount, supported more than 23 times as many jobs.)
How is that a bad thing? I think I'm going to call for Dow Chemical to hire 25,000 more people, hand them some test tubes, and shut down it's manufacturing plants.
>>> Silicon Valley might need to spend a far greater share of its treasure to maintain a general faith in its good intentions. It might need to wade more deeply into politics, not to secure tax breaks for itself but to force the development of affordable housing and transit in the Bay Area and beyond, so its neighbors don’t lose when it wins.
You can't make housing affordable (other than making it less attractive). You can subsidize it, which is a charitable thing to do, but the price didn't change, just the person paying the rent.
>>> Were either company to lose the trust and optimism of its customers, it wouldn’t just be akin to ExxonMobil failing to sell oil or Dow Chemical to sell plastic; it would be like failing to drill oil, to make plastic.
This author has a very weird view of the world. People don't use Google because they like Google, they use it because Google has solved entire swaths of problems that are very handy to have solved (like finding things on the internet, and email that isn't awful). Are there privacy concerns? I guess, but honestly outside of people who complain about privacy as their actual job, people clearly don't care even a little.
>>> If inventing new modes of communication or collaboration was seen as a mercenary act—as no nobler than drilling a well or devising a mortgage-backed security—then such platforms would never thrive, because their value tends to arise from a long, slow, unprofitable process of experimentation.
Anyone who actually understood the valley would see that not only is it the most mercenary place imaginable, but also that this is exactly how it should and must be. Competition breeds efficiency and innovation. You can start a company here and succeed exactly because you can compete on the same terms as the big players, and if you build something better it is very hard to stop you.
The message should be more "hey idiots who seem to have time to stand around protesting that someone is using a bus stop, spend less time protesting bullshit and more time trying to make money if that is a major concern in your life" and less "making money means you have obligations to cough some up whenever anybody with less money notices".
I've grown up in Silicon Valley, lived here since 1976. I am 46 years old now. I have seen the last remaining orchards replaced by tech companies. And I see the ghost town buildings of old tech companies not far from Fry's on Arques.
The Google buses are discreet, quietly picking up people and dumping them off home like on at the plaza on Cox/Saratoga, weary nerds wandering off it to go home and get some shut eye.
This is how it is, there are those who have and the have nots. We all agree there should be a better way. But arrogance? Not hardly. Would you say the same of an actress in Hollywood trying to make it, working on tables, then she gets her first big break and goes a little mad, spending her money? Well, that's what has happened with some of the people that have made things happen in Silicon Valley.
Arrogance is writing a shitty whiny complaining article that solves no problems. Whinge whinge whinge.