Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

I'm going to introduce a new app that will disrupt Silicon Valley, it's called Slapify

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/ajit-pai-announces-plan-to-eliminate-title-ii-net-neutrality-rules/

it's blurbs like that which make me wish i was more miserable just to spite them

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/11/tech-innovation-silicon-valley-juicero

...At the root of the problem is the story we tell ourselves about innovation. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a lone genius disappears into a garage, preferably in Palo Alto, and emerges with an invention that changes the world. The engine of technological progress is the entrepreneur – the fast-moving, risk-loving, rule-breaking visionary in the mold of Steve Jobs.

This story has been so widely repeated as to become a cliche. It’s also inaccurate. Contrary to popular belief, entrepreneurs typically make terrible innovators. Left to its own devices, the private sector is far more likely to impede technological progress than to advance it. That’s because real innovation is very expensive to produce: it involves pouring extravagant sums of money into research projects that may fail, or at the very least may never yield a commercially viable product. In other words, it requires a lot of risk – something that, myth-making aside, capitalist firms have little appetite for.

article is very otm. will be interesting to see what an increase in defense spending will mean for DARPA, though. DARPA is a huge contributor to the basic research roots of innovation referenced in the article.

they forgot the part where the fast-moving, risk-loving, rule-breaking visionary has a technology nerd friend who does the actual legwork

that's the two-parter, you have to have a entrepreneur type to guide the business, but you have to have someone technically proficient to actually be the business core

the other, related myth is that technically skilled people make for good leaders or entrepreneurs. like, you come up with a good idea, are one of the few to make it into a real business, and for some reason the world thinks you should be CEO

what makes a good leader is still really poorly understood outside of a very small number of professions, almost all of them physically dangerous (i.e. not entrepreneurship or tech)

there's a bazillion business books on greatness in leadering with true leadery leadershipness but all of it falls apart because they're all counterfactuals in the context of how workplaces and organizations actually behave

imo there are some skills that are important but a whole lot of it is "figure out who you think is successful and document how they do things"

the problem is when people emulate all the wrong things

xxp I can't tell if your post is adding to the myth about innovation from the article or at some point offering what you think is reality. I don't even think the myth, as presented in the article or added to with your post, is necessarily wrong. It's more that a surface reading of the myth misses how the technology nerd friend (or entrepreneur), if truly bringing innovation, probably grew this innovation with some public funding. or she is king wizard of a platform for innovation that was built on public research funding.

"platform for innovation" should probably be "innovative platform"

I only read headlines

i'm in a book club that's reading this btw it's very good https://smile.amazon.com/Managers-Path-Leaders-Navigating-Growth/dp/1491973897?_encoding=UTF8&keywords=The%20Manager%27s%20Path&qid=1487954081&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1

are you for real

tbh, I like the article less the more I think about it. seems to annoyingly conflate "innovation" and "fundamental research". it is ok to still call an innovation in the application of an old science "innovation". you can take that term off the altar.

some of the AI shit happening is an innovative application of many-year-old breakthroughs in silicon and machine learning. it is still innovative and cool (though everyone will enjoy shitting on it around here).

also v confused about whether I should consider buying that book

to be clear it's a practical management book, not "leadership", and the advice only makes sense if you work in tech.

it's on oreilly safari if you have access to that btw

i do. thank you.

is your book club oreilly safari focused? that seems like a pretty good idea.

no it just started. its online and management focussed, organized through https://engmanagers.github.io which is a good community.

I have a safari trial right now, might check it out

on a side note, I found out we have a number of corp safari accounts and I'm going to totally lobby for one

if you have a safari trial then you might want to check out their orioles just sayin

I signed up for some of their live class sessions but was mostly waitlisted

not going to screenshot right now, but I went to that Orioles page and the top three images are YOU

a bazillion business books on greatness in leadering with true leadery leadershipness

I just read Xenophon's Cyropaedia, the original pattern for all these books.

He suggests the very best way to lead is by being a much better person than everyone else. Also, he recommends lavishly rewarding the kinds of behavior you want to encourage, by freely handing out large quantities of real honest cash and other similar forms of treasure whenever your subordinates perform well. He was also big on supplying subordinates with everything they might need in the way of equipment or supplies, including health care btw.

Needless to say, most modern business books are a bit light on these pieces of advice.

NB: Where I merely stated "a much better person", Xenophon specifies being more honest, more diligent, more kindly, more moral, more loyal and more thoughtful than everyone else.

idk, hasn't helped me that much

Have you tried lavishing treasure on your subordinates, yet?

tbh people who commission those books are moneyed leaders who enjoy hagiography

did Xenophon write this before or after he was best buddies with a king

Xenophon wrote it while he was best buddies with the Spartan king Agesilaus, but Cyrus the Great, who gets the hagiographic treatment in this book, died more than century before Xenophon was born.

Backlash to the Juicero-inspired Silicon-Valley backlash:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/11/silicon-valley-a-reality-check/

I'd be interested in the same view with funding numbers attached to each of the projects

Aimless, when you read a great work that's worthy of using as a frame for contemporary events, could you maybe determine how that work figures into context first?

I mean, I go back to basics and think of things in the terms of Aesop's fables but don't go "hmm, but the tortoise"

shh

:)

brb going to frame every thread in terms of fifty shades of grey. it's derivative, but it wears it all on its sensible dress

Plato refers to Socrates as the "gadfly" of the state (as the gadfly stings the horse into action, so Socrates stung various Athenians), insofar as he irritated some people with considerations of justice and the pursuit of goodness. His attempts to improve the Athenians' sense of justice may have been the cause of his execution.

could you maybe determine how that work figures into context first?

there are contexts and there are contexts, but as a favor to you I will figure it all out for you if you like, once you tell me your priorities, so I can get it all straight in my head.

so I have this silly party game deck from one of those tech thinky groups, you know the one, people who have good cred but aren't highly-connected fund millionaires

the cards are three sets
DESIGN ACTION | ATTRIBUTE | OBJECT
it's tiresome for a good portion because wtf who wants to think about this, and other times it is a little too true, and then.. I just pulled it out and drew

TWEAK | ANTI-SURVEILLANCE | FRIDGE

aw this is good shit

mh, I have a feeling there is a context for your comments that you haven't shared. For example, have you read the Cyropaedia? How much of Plato have you read? In what context did you read them? Did you draw conclusions from what you read? What were they? Do those conclusions conflict with what I said? Or conflict with what you read into what I said? If the latter, what exactly were you reading into my statements and where do your ideas conflict? Be brief, if possible, but comprehensive. Thx.

lol

You know who is a better tortoise than everyone else? Diego of Galapagos.

this is what ticks me off most about that stupid insistence that all government research have concrete results - it gets things exactly backwards. publicly-funded research is at its best when its goal is not results or market driven but exploratory. when it tries to transform theoretical findings into concrete benefits it will nearly always be inferior to market-driven "innovation". this is what good entrepeneurs truly excel at - turning theoretical improvements (which it is unlikely to find on its own because there's no money in it) into stuff people will actually want.

I assume the only reason the GOP hasn't turned "all government research funding should be run like the CIA's In-Q-Tel" is because there's too much jurisdictional pork in the National Labs and the DoD would scream if you threatened their precious FFRDCs

fwiw this is why I was o_O when I went to that Orioles page caek recommended

http://imgur.com/An2F0Mn

http://i.imgur.com/An2F0Mn.png

I have the following 4* characters at 12 covers:

Cyclops
Nick Fury
Hulkbuster
Gwenpool (I have had 5 purple for a while; this past month, I pulled 3 purple Gwenpool covers in a row from classic legends)
Riri

C4rol is at 7, Medusa at 6, Bl4de at 10

wait until you see part 4 xp

wtf how did that happen, I could have sworn I was in the MPQ thread