Same thing happened in 2000. Greed and over valued start ups then. Now it’s cheap money and crypto.

The myth may be on pause, but Americans are devoted acolytes of the technotopia. We’re expecting tech to fix everything from climate change to dying. Maybe social media and old school advertising is over. But faith in tech to keep us going is stronger than ever.

Tech is fine. Old companies fail and new ones rise up to take their place. That's actually the sign of a healthy economy. What unhealthy is constant bailouts and easy money proping up zombie companies.

Especially when those companies receiving taxpayers money for a bailout have executives who put them in the shit, who still walk away with a multi million dollar wage on top of a multi million dollar signing bonus. They scream they need help, “oh god what about the jobs if we can’t financially recover” they scream, without ever considering the executives and leaders could easily take a pay cut and be fine.

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It never was a healthy business culture. I remember the first dot con boom...it was absolute insanity. You had mining shell companies that were listed as penny stocks rebranding as tech companies...boom...overnight trading in the mid 20s.

Today is not as bad as then. But the article is right ...how we valuate these companies never made sense.

But I don't think there isn't room for improvement on the old ideas. I followed the hype to OpenAIs site. Tried the GPT-3 chatbot to see if it would yield better answers to work related questions than a Google search session I spent several hours on in the previous day. 15 minutes later, done with even better results. Tech lives. With or without the older players.

I mean yeah? Who want to be primate monkey only raising offsprings and dying?

Saying "I don't think the society / technology we've built is working, and may actively be harmful" is not the same as "We have to return to monke and live in straw hut"

Of course its not but point is to develop further not to stay in place and birth children like animals for bilions of years. Big tech have its flaws, Facebook is terrible but it is a price for development, unfortunately. I will also way more like to have it controlled and channeled into one, good for all humanity direction.

But what if the development we're doing is entirely in the wrong direction?

Yes, adults cannot return to being children, but it doesn't necessarily mean they're growing in the right direction.

"Ah well, I have a heroin addiction now. Just goes to show how we humans are always growing and changing, and even if it makes for hard times, it's all for the best! I'm definitely going somewhere with all this!"

No, no, no, hear me out. If you close one eye, hop on one foot, and hum the theme to Gilligan's Island then this new crypto scheme is totally different than all the rest! I promise! And look, the CEO and founder is a 12 year old boy! It must be good! Someone give him ten billion dollars and absolutely no oversight!

It might be time to admit that humans basically have no idea what they're doing.

Pointing out problems is piss easy, the hard part is finding workable solutions people are willing to enforce.

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Ai startups are happening like crazy right now. It is not even hard to start one, no code tools exist, connect a few APIs and specialty train a model or two and you have a new and very useful product.

Seems like it isn't that easy, people hate changing, and thus they are remiss to admit when something isn't working. Sorry I didn't come in with a complete plan to transform society.

We need a solid crash like in the 90s to early 2000s.

Tech quite frankly needs to do some gatekeeping and come back to tech underpinning the work- not disruption or changing the status quo. Have the tech first and then have it go where it may.

SV culturally is swamped with people who want to be "in tech" but with none of the deep technical background or interest. Just the money and glamour.

No one expects you to have a plan, just understand that your awareness of some of the problems isn’t worth anything. People with plans matter, people waiting for people with plans don’t.

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Airlines cough cough

This is my point. The unwavering belief that technology is the answer. Unquestioned. And people immediately become defensive if you even hint that you might have doubts about whether that’s true or not.

Who is deciding what “the point” is? There’s no big book in the sky saying “humans exist to develop technology so they can be advanced”. This unquestioned belief that our only purpose is to always technologically advance is now dogma. It’s unthinkable to imagine our “purpose” has any other course.

Actually, climate skepticism is the only thing preventing us from solving the crisis. We already have ample technology to solve it. The problem is nobody believes those who are “pointing out the problem”. Not so easy I’d say. Raising awareness always looks easy after it’s been done.

People do have plans. We know how to solve the crisis, today. But it’s not being solved simply because enough people haven’t been persuaded to believe those who are pointing out the problem. It’s not at all easy to do that with irrational hairless simians. They are notoriously tribal and suspicious creatures.

By all means, tell me the plan.

Paywall. Text?

Let me ask the question the opposite way, what is then? Its similar to democracy, not the best overall but best we have. Im not defensive and I may be absolutly wrong. But I see no other option that is at least scienitificaly proven.

But we ARE animals…

What a horribly bad faith arguement. “Only people with plans matter” acting like you’ve ever had a “plan” past your next meal.

I never said we are not. I said thats primitive with our possibilities and brains to just reporudce and stagnate, living in cozy peacefull farmhouse.

No one of course. Never said that this belief in unqueationed, jusr said that survival of the fittest long ago was a predictor of sucesfull species. If we stagnate we wont adapt and will just fall of the train. Now it may be something else than technology but i personally see only technology, yoy can show me otherwise.

It’s amazing how pissed off kids online get when you ask them for more than slogans, memes, or insults. Where else would you go to find people accusing you of bad faith when their whole response is a screech.

It was so nice to watch the charlatans leave in 2001. Freeways opened up, you could have dinner without having to listen to the tech bros at the next table yelling about their latest business plan.

The core of Silicon Valley hasn't gone anywhere. It will keep innovating. The wannabes? Good riddance

Ah I see, you’re just bored today and looking to scrap online. Have a good day/night.

> People do have plans. We know how to solve the crisis, today.

That’s a big claim, I’m just asking you to back it up, but if you’d rather take your ball and go home… then go. We’ll both pretend that’s about me and something I said, rather than you having nothing else to offer.

Every technology that’s been invented has a major downsides. Vaccines and medical advances (technology) raised life expectancy to new heights. But now people live longer, stay in jobs longer, own their houses longer. Developed nations have too many old people and not enough resources for the young. It’s not just a housing crisis. It’s how are we going to keep paying for these old people (me included) in their later years with fewer and fewer young people paying into the system? Economies begin to stagnate and quality of life starts to go down.

Another example is the paradox of efficiency. You might say we just need more and better tech to maximize our energy use. But the paradox of efficiency says whatever new capacity gets created from new efficiencies quickly gets consumed and you’re back to overusing a given resource.

Not saying technology is bad. I’m just saying the blind faith that it’s the only answer is no different than believing in god.

They also destroyed affordable housing in San Francisco and created more homelessness

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It speaks to some real problems but this article also has the thick envy/resentment journalism bros have for tech bros

Airlines, banks, energy companies, automobile manufacturers, airplane manufacturers, factory farms, cough cough

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And the Same companies start moderating content as told by the goverment

New business models will surface. Maybe the silver lining is that instead of the best minds of [our] generation thinking about how to make people click on ads, they'll be refocused elsewhere.

I will never stop hating that companies that make apps and websites somehow glommed onto the "tech" and "Silicon Valley" monikers, much less that "Silicon Valley" somehow magically moved from the south and east bay up to San Francisco. Those titles belong to the companies actually making the electronics and silicon in the valley, who are still around and doing quite well.

Ah yes, the Bay Area’s housing issues are completely the tech industry’s fault and no fault of anything (or anyone) else.

that's your politicians fault.

Technology is pretty much the only reason why human beings were ever able to rise to the top of the food chain. It's not just Americans.

If we'd never evolved brains powerful enough for us to start using tools to protect ourselves from starvation, disease, predators, the elements, etc... we'd still be cowering in caves and getting eaten by mountain lions.

If we hadn't continued that to develop agriculture, navigation, weapons, architecture, etc. well we probably would've just gotten our asses whooped by another group of humans who did. Which... actually happened to many groups in history.

Computers and shitcoins are just the continuation of that same evolutionary trend.

This guy is just calling you defensive as a pre-emptive way to undermine any criticism you might have of his unsubstantiated hot take of a point.

In the words of Greta Thunberg... "small dick energy"

Yes, Republicans would have prevented a housing crisis

who knows? maybe yes. maybe no.

as it is, we only know which politicians actually did fail.

Maybe, not at all

So you add another point to my argument. You say yourself that technology is pretty much the only reason we exist. Which I absolutely agree with you btw. I’m not disputing technology’s power. I’m only asking why we put so much faith into it when it creates problems at the same time as solving others. Like a cosmic whack-a-mole. But we don’t even question that paradox. Like a faith, we say: so be it, why are you doubting so much?

then it sounds it like you folks are simply fated to have a housing crisis and there is no hope for anything but.

The biggest issue pointed out by piece is, tech companies are now monopolies. How do we expect anything to get done or change when big tech just buys everything up?

Well I could vote republican, but nothing would get fixed and they would start investigating drags shows, so 🤷‍♂️

well to be clear i'm not advising voting any particular way.

but i have noticed that in areas where red or blue has a solid guaranteed lock on the vote. the hard things never get done.

imo it's probably because the electorate gets taken for granted.

Lol. Try to meet people on the ground they walk. This guy seems to have arrived at a world view where he sees an interesting contradiction in the human condition (his condition) in which becoming conscious of his attention, realized that the technology provides leverage, but not answers. This is admirable in itself. He is being sincere about trying to communicate his experience and the meaning it had for him

This doesn’t make sense. Every innovation will have some sort of new problem. Agriculture required lots of land and messing up the habitats of the natural ecosystem. New medicine has side effects.

It’s not that problems are being dismissed. It’s that the benefits outweigh the short term cons and the challenge is then to solve the new problems

A part of the valuation issue that is not discussed enough is the distorting effect of the Fed’s QE since 2008. It created an overly hot stock market, which contributed to high valuations, which enabled exorbitantly high salaries, which distorted local markets in everything from coffee to housing.

Techies left and SF has worse homelessness and still has high cost of living. It couldn’t have to do with NIMBYs constantly blaming everything but not building, could it?

Totally agree.

It also kind of bugs me to have people say "I'm in tech, too!" while it took me years to become an engineer and they've just joined in a non-tech role. I can only smile -- as everyone wants to be in tech now. And people used to call us nerds as an insult, but somehow now it's cool to be a nerd. Go figure.

Nimbys is a problem throughout the state. It was the tech surge that made moderately priced houses into million dollar starter homes in a few years in SF.

Of course! It’s the over demand side that’s the problem, not the supply shortage! Shrinking tax base sure is great!

The key is right connections

Annoys me as well, this article also applies it to Amazon, which has always been headquartered in Washington.

It is crazy to me SF is considered not just a part of Silicon Valley but its core by a lot of people.

It was bad enough during the dotcom boom when all those companies only made software. Silicon Valley got back to the silicon (with the rise of handheld devices like the iPod and phones) and then the web server jockeys moved on to SF.

Don't get me wrong, they do real work. Setting up an ecommerce server is non-trivial. But it's also at least as close to K-Mart as it is to Microsoft.

And then came the mattress, razor, underwear companies. They just sell crap over the internet and that's a tech play? Wait? Now offering payment plans to buy stuff is tech too? Nonsense.

I had the complete opposite experience with chatgpt. The lack of follow up questions when it cannot answer my questions on the first try made it fail the Turing test for me in the first 5 minutes.

If interest rates tumbled to 0 again for corporations, would this reverse?

I don’t think dude was trying to administer a Turing test lol. He was using it as a search engine alternative.

Do you have an example of an energy company bailout? I remember negative oil and no associated bailout….

-GM enters the Chat-

Back in late 2008 I was working as a line worker in my 2nd year as a temporary worker. I was laid off during the crash, and 6 months later I received a letter that I no longer had a job with General Motors. I read in the paper a few months later about the plant I worked at being bulldozed.

Just like that, thousands of good paying jobs were destroyed even though the corporation was given government money to remedy the problem.

As for our CEOs? Well they couldn't be reached at their yachts and private mansions for comment. I started looking at Unions, Corporations, and the Government with a pretty dirty look after those years.

Glamour. Lol

I have been in tech 25 years, no glamor. Now sloshing cash around, plenty of that

Yeah my take was response to the articles and Reddit posts that came out saying how amazing it is.

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