Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

Maybe they could wire up some of the posters who are already robots to offer cabbie-like chitchat with riders. I look forward to cruising to the airport while frustratedly trying to overcome canned spiels on the number of chord changes and melodic lines necessary for true great pop, rendered in the voice of the defense computer from WarGames.

https://twitter.com/duncanrobinson/status/778259408379908096

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cszup6TWEAEWoX-.jpg

as much as i hate Theil & co I feel like being anti-SVTU easily and often bleeds over into Luddism or daft bad sci-fi, like the above quote

it's like when you're young and hipsters don't like a band after the wrong people get into it. we shouldn't not be stoked on technologies just cuz of turds like Benedict Evans being lameasses on twitter

the thing is that a lot of these technologies and companies, outside of the ones that are pure social networking/online stuff, exist outside of silicon valley

it's like silicon valley is LA of some past year and all kinds of bands from there are getting promo money and radio play, everyone in the industry falling over each other to say how they really get music, keep wondering why bands are even trying to start out anywhere else

bands elsewhere are trying to just make music and are doing ok but all the press is about LA because they're just throwing money everywhere

I don't think "we've tried this before, it was called edwardianism" is ludditism any more than "we've tried libertarianism before it was called feudalism"

That said, SV is not as bad as benedict Evans it's true

I mean, SV the geographical place that exists irl sounds like hell on earth, granted. but i would never live there and don't have to. just bummed that the "SV of the mind", generally being stoked on technologies, is now considered in poor taste, in my circles

I don't get why 'property is expensive in London' + 'apps' = Downton Abbey tho?

tbh what rankles me most is the unease at seeing that I (or, well maybe i'm more techno-optimist than yall but many of my gen) will be just as anti-tech as, like, my mom, who takes decades to adopt any new technology, only after a period of intense suspicion that it will either a. give her some form of cancer, b. lead to the wholesale deterioration of society

I'm stoked on technology like agricultural automation and biomedical research and carbon sequestration, which is capable of transforming the material reality and well-being of entire societies if funded and focused in communitarian ways

phone apps are pretty piddly by comparison

That's a good point

I don't get why 'property is expensive in London' + 'apps' = Downton Abbey tho?

i guess the idea is that from the self-taught economist POV of SV, sharing apps are merely more efficient allocation of capital. but if that's true then we learned in the 19th c that unfettered capitalism enables and amplify inequalities that most semi-social democracies (even the US) now seek to correct.

in the particular case that guy is imagining, it's domestic service with payment in room share housing instead of money, which is the downton abbey model. in 1900 housing was inexpensive enough that you needed to supplement the accomodation with money. nowadays housing in places like london and SF is expensive enough relative to local wages (lol 30% of your income on housing ahhahah) that it's not obvious the market would require you to supplement it at all.

yea silby otm

i tihnk it is obv the language customs and culture of SV that is most grating, "disruption" and coders drinking soylent and greed and housing prices in SF and all that shit that turn people off? (and fwiw most people love SV talk still right? eg i think when most people talk about uber they are still talking about how rad it is and not like the effect on urban transportation and the taxi industry and all that)

the SVTU talk drips into other spheres too, like lol do you guys get ads pushed to you by this company? they are all over my twitter and fb feed https://hiburrow.com/

THE FURNITURE INDUSTRY HASN’T EVOLVED IN OVER 50 YEARS. THROUGH YEARS OF RESEARCH AND BY TALKING TO PEOPLE JUST LIKE YOU, WE WERE ABLE TO IDENTIFY AND SOLVE THE BIGGEST PAIN POINTS IN THE INDUSTRY.

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/575b6a34d210b8173a48796a/t/57aeab35579fb31363782bc5/1471064886507/Scene+Hero.jpg

disrupting the furniture industry

there is this thing called live-in nannies xp

thank you for your contribution, but perhaps your time would be better spent posting literally every thought that runs through your head about your portable telephone

i tihnk it is obv the language customs and culture of SV that is most grating, "disruption" and coders drinking soylent and greed and housing prices in SF and all that shit that turn people off?

that's how it feels for this SF resident. it's embedded in the contradiction between their utopian pseudo-hippie claims and they're entitled libertarian practices ime.

imo they seem like people that don't go out very often, and if they do, it's to places that are bad

That said, SV is not as bad as benedict Evans it's true

very few things are, thankfully

benny evans being clowned on his inability to find things to do in SF was a definite highlight

For context, we have a situation in the UK at the moment where people are employed (or not 'employed' as such) at a rate of £3.75 per delivery to take food from restaurants to people who have requested it via an app. There is no guarantee that you are going to be required, but the model essentially requires massive spare capacity (hanging around all day, unpaid) so people don't have to wait more than a fixed amount of time in the lunchtime rush. Make eight deliveries a day and you earn £30. Do that 30 days a month, you earn £900. A single room in a flat share will cost you two thirds of that as a minimum.

Idk if it so outlandish to see a return to widespread domestic service (albeit with some level of payment) as possible.

Xps

it's applicable to a few topics (hell, half the topics) but I was struck by a passage about modernism when reading over the weekend. it was a very top-down movement: an elite class creating an aesthetic, in architecture, furniture, and design that sets a direction for society

nobody ever started producing eames lounge chairs or even the molded fiberglass ones in the quantity or price point that many people would want or afford them. there's also the fact that few people can really jump on to a design movement -- even if you like new, innovative designs, you're going to compromise and pick things that kind of blend with your lifestyle and aesthetic. so there are a lot of decent-to-mediocre designs that did well because they remind you of sleek modernism but blend pretty well with that chair you inherited

I love a bunch of modernist designs and find them aspirational in the sense I'd like to own some, and like to live in the streamlined way others imply, but there's the sense that the built objects are still a model of what could be but could never quite fit

the SV utopianism is like a modernism that is so very hung up on being profitable, yet at the same time the insistence that a ground-up utopia could exist is an ever-present fantasy. thiel's enthusiasm for libertarian island, burning man camps that have all of the modern luxuries and only have the people. soylent to avoid labor and interactions that remind you of things like food sourcing, prep work, and the people involved in all of that business.

those pesky harassers and the harassed who remind you that communities, even online ones, need moderation because you can't have an audience of only your people, like you can in your encampment

benny evans being clowned on his inability to find things to do in SF was a definite highlight

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Tuesday, September 20, 2016 1:01 PM (thirteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

omg I must hate-read this later

never mind, it was short. the responses from people in SF who have no idea where interesting things are might be the best part

that's kind of every city, in that people who live in cities tend to fall into routines and go to museums, large parks, less often than visitors do unless they live right next to them (or they _actually like art and parks_)

but holy shit some people are clueless

reminds me I need to head back to see SF MOMA, though. I was there a couple months before it closed!

haven't been to the new MOMA yet but def excited to check it out

there's a million things to do in this City, having kids to expose things to has def expanded my range of stuff/places we go to (granted the number of restaurants/clubs I go out to has correspondingly decreased)

basically what mh and silby said

sv investors throw a lot of money at dumb mobile app devs because they're under the impression that apps are solving valuable problems

there's still money to be made in developing them, so devs churn out these useless apps and exaggerate the seriousness of the "problem" they're solving

the rest of us see that they solve low priority problems and we equate tech with these app devs and start feeling like they're entitled pos's

there are lots of things devs could be working on that fix how businesses interact with each other or building better erp's, data software, green tech, or even research, but all this is boring to them and not "sexy"

i feel like this is the world we live in though. if it's not cool, hip, or where all the money is, people will run away from it

v succinct and accurate description ime

except it's not like there isn't money to be made on ERP implementation, and heck if you do it right you might even make a few thousand people's lives a little less unpleasant. Nobody's going to blog about it though.

I love a bunch of modernist designs and find them aspirational in the sense I'd like to own some, and like to live in the streamlined way others imply, but there's the sense that the built objects are still a model of what could be but could never quite fit

― dr. mercurio arboria (mh 😏), Tuesday, September 20, 2016 11:15 AM (sixteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's a balance between functional and artistic for me

i'm a strong believer of form follows function but there needs to be a bit of not-completely-coherent art to it because it's nice to look at nice things or live around things that look cool

i think there's space for both and if "not fitting" is taken as a more "artistic endeavour," it is an important element because it enhances our lives, it prevents us from being in such a dull and coldly designed space

xxp i'd be fine with that situation if it weren't for the fact that investors think traditional companies with long-term business plans and research need to show year-over-year growth continually when products take years to develop and some markets are cyclical

that and academic/nonprofit research getting shafted, jesus

oh yeah well that's kind of an electoral issue, NIH's budget has like not grown in real dollars for a decade or something miserable like that; I spent November through August under the impression that I could end up getting laid off at any time if a grant didn't fund

there's supposed to be some badass stanley kubrick exhibit at the jewish contemporary museum. free passes at most libraries.

Sfmoma is amazing

http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/29/technology/chris-messina-non-monogamy/

luv 2 disrupt fuckin

every single paragraph contains a punchable sentiment

"But as a child of divorce and an aspiring designer-entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, I was suspicious of marriage, or any other limit on my access to other people's attention"

didn't we already clown this in 2015, maybe on another thread?

it's really hard to top the cutoff culture dude but polygamy guy tried

I grew up spoon fed monogamist fairy tales that pushed "happily ever after" endings

vs

as a child of divorce

http://ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?showall=true&bookmarkedmessageid=5357198&boardid=77&threadid=97044

guys I was the one who posted it, sorry

damn it, 77 link, abort abort

the bicycle for our hearts is peak ted talk

looking for the fleshlight for my heart

double-fuck him for also apparently inventing the hashtag

lol at that claim

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/09/the-algorithms-that-tell-bosses-how-employees-feel/502064/

techno-dystopianism

on trendwatch: the phrase "nerdesse oblige" to refer to neoliberal "code for good" stuff

e.g. https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/780875752967380994

lol holy fuck at their summary of agriculture

can't wait 2 disrupt plants&animals

all the actual work on vat-grown meat is happening in academia of course

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-manifest-destiny

it is once again time to mock the silicon valley hero who got scurvy

At Graham’s table, he and others discussed how to stop Donald Trump, then decided to reach out to an affiliated expert: Chris Lehane, a former White House lawyer now at the YC company Airbnb. Altman declared, “The best idea seems to be just to support Hillary.”

someone hand that guy a billion dollars