from Hacker News

An Alternative History of Silicon Valley Disruption

by pmcpinto on 10/30/18, 7:12 AM with 69 comments

• by Endama on 10/31/18, 5:01 PM

  This article touches on an idea that I think many in the tech industry (myself included) continue to be myopic about: as disruptors we are held responsible for the negative social outcomes that we bestow upon society. I think many (not all) of us who work in software believe that the innovations we unleash, in-and-of themselves, make up for nearly any negative externality caused as consequence. We have brought services or experiences that have made life more convenient, faster, more accessible, etc.; that should be more than sufficient to legitimize our existence and effort.

  Inside this framework, the driving factor is what Wired calls "techno-darwinism" the idea that software companies are "still standing post-disruption must have survived because they were the fittest". If you talk to people in SV, especially after the depression, the stereotype was that every startup was about to "change the world by becoming the [X] for [Y]" (Uber for cookies, AirBNB for laundry, etc.)

  However, the outside world looks at us with disdain: they don't view our motivations as a desire for simple innovation or creativity, but outright greed and power. The folks that we have disrupted are often those who do not have the means to convert their labor to new industries; even when they do, those industries then get disrupted by some new actor.

  Tech workers also have, stereotypically, been disdainful of government: it's too slow, too compromised/corrupt, too inefficient. However, engagement with the polity is the main vehicle by which the poor and disenfranchised are are able to find some kind of recourse for their lives, either by the ballot box or the ammo box.

  I've been telling my non-tech friends recently that the great sin of our industry is not greed, its naivety and hubris.

• by empath75 on 10/31/18, 1:40 PM

  > For instance, the same year the government loaned $535 million to solar-power company Solyndra, it also loaned Tesla $465 million. “Taxpayers footed the bill for Solyndra’s losses—yet got hardly any of Tesla’s” gains, she says. Solyndra has become “a byword for the government’s sorry track record when it came to picking winners,” a story that has helped keep regulators at bay, she says.

  I'm no Tesla fan, but that's sort of how loans work. You get your money back plus interest. It's not a lottery ticket. And Tesla paid back their loan early. I don't think the program lost very much money overall.

• by technobabble on 10/31/18, 2:56 PM

  Books mentioned in the article:

  - How American Work, American Business, and the American Dream Became Temporary by Louis Hyman

  - The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy by Mariana Mazzucato

  - Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas

  edit: formatting, copy paste issues (argh)

• by hndude on 10/31/18, 1:30 PM

  Any additional evidence (either for or against) the claim that government pays for tech advances, while the private sector is who sees a return from that?

• by malvosenior on 10/31/18, 2:06 PM

  How can someone write a whole article about disruption but not actually use the correct, well understood meaning of the term? They literally just made up their own strawman definition of what "disruption" means (tech people getting rich I guess?).

  Disruption has always been used to mean disrupting established market leaders via innovation. Guess what? That's exactly what has happened with Uber, AirBnB, Amazon...

  If anyone wants to learn more about the actual meaning of disruption, I suggest The Innovator's Dilemma: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma

• by thoughtexplorer on 10/31/18, 2:41 PM

  > (One of the future Trump adviser’s least favorite words? “Politics.”)

  What's with this unrelated off topic dig?

  Secondly, what's the point they're trying to make? That Thiel is a hypocrite? If so, you can both hate politics/government and work to try to improve it. One strategy is to do so from within. Musk was trying to do the same for a while.

• by plankers on 10/31/18, 12:59 PM

  Can confirm, was a contractor in Silicon Valley. The "narrative" these executives sell is little more than an opiate for their fleets of highly-paid engineers to feel like they're justified in having a salary several times higher than the contractors they work with on a daily basis.

• by charlesbradshaw on 10/31/18, 7:19 PM

  This article deeply disappoints me as Hacker news is the last place that I would expect to find Luddites.

  > They promised the open web, we got walled gardens

  Google doesn't give out its users data in the same way that a bank doesn't give out it's users balances.

  > ...many of the dystopian business practices we associate with fast-growing tech platforms [like] operating with a small group of well-paid engineers, surrounded by contractors

  The implication here is that before Amazon, no company applied aggressive and unethical cost saving measures. When was Nestle founded again?

  > Uber did not cause this precarious economy. It is the waste product of the service economy

  This is the kind of thing that makes you sound smart but means nothing. There is not an explanation of the "waste product of the service economy" that follows this quote. In fact this implies it is not Uber's fault at all for disrupting the taxi industry.

  > In the case of venture capitalists, [...] their real genius appears to lie in their timing: their ability to enter a sector late, after the highest development risks had already been taken, but at an optimum moment to make a killing

  The implication being that nobody made a competitor company before the internet was around. The other claim is that being n+1 to the market gives you a guaranteed and significant advantage. If this was the case it would be trivial to overtake Google.

  > The tech visionaries’ predictions did not usher us into the future, but rather a future where they are kings

  This line tells me that the author has gotten used to modern day conveniences that tech has brought us and thinks its unpredictable that people who made companies that span the globe are rich and powerful.

• by mcguire on 10/31/18, 3:26 PM

  It's nice to see Wired still has their visual panache, but how do I get rid of the pop-up ad covering half the screen?

• by prepend on 10/31/18, 1:37 PM

  I’m not sure what this articles point is. Disruption as called by Christensen, Andreeson, Thiel, etc all talks about displaced jobs and industries. I don’t think this is unknown. It’s just that the benefits outweigh the costs (to some).

  So this isn’t an alternative history more than it is just a weird anecdote or two without follow-up.

  I’m not sure what Wired is as a magazine any more. It really needs knowledgeable editors to plan and shape stories along some theme. I feel like these stories about rich and bad Silicon Valley is are pretty common and all boil down to the same reality that Silicon Valley has high margins and makes a lot of money for in demand employees and stockholders. This isn’t relevatory though and I’m not sure what Wired’s angle is.