Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

no offense to caek, but that idea has been around for years: https://bostonreview.net/gender-sexuality/sarah-sharma-going-work-mommys-basement

About three years ago a funny quip began circulating on social media that the gig economy was now mostly composed of Mommy apps. Business Insider suggested that twenty-something techbros were wasting their talents designing technologies and programs for things they wished their Mommies still did for them: driving, cooking, cleaning, laundering. Newsweek even ran a similar story under the headlines read “Silicon Valley Needs Moms.” The term “post-mom economy” emerged to capture this particular moment in tech(bro) culture when Uber (“Mommy, drive me”), TaskRabbit (“Mommy, clean my room”), GrubHub (“Mommy, I’m hungry”), and LiveBetter (“Mommy, I’m bored”) emerged.

this is why the cult of Elon Musk bothers me so much, virtually all of the man's "innovations" consists of stuff that would only really be useful to a rich Silicon Valley person. the early crop of Teslas has obvious design flaws because apparently nobody ever considered that someone who lived in a less sunny place than California would ever buy one! he's like all those hack comedians who have been on the road for 15 years and now their entire act consists of complaining about airports and hotels

How do you spend $46 a day on fast food??

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Sunday, February 28, 2021 8:36 PM (yesterday)

why does a private chef cost less than this?

xp, aha. That makes sense. I used to call those "I'm to lazy to do" startups. I thought it was a sign of how spent the current tech boom had become. The mom terms work better.

Lately it feels like the hype has shifted away from apps to emergent tech - robotics, AI, EVs, batteries, biotech, etc. I guess that's at least better than having everyone try to find a way to sell beer at an unreasonable markup through an app.

There was an article from a few years ago that I'm sure was shared and discussed here where it was put in a good way that basically said the same thing, something about how 20 something start-up founders only knew how to create apps that solve the kinds of problems 20 something start-up founders have.

My new idea is an app that will remind users to wash their ass every 24 hours

the internet of shit will never be the same

Sorry DJP, still too much user effort required. Would need to be an app that sends an underemployed gig worker over to aim a hose at the user's ass.

where would they plug in the hose?

"Have you guys tried SpitShine yet? TOTAL GAME CHANGER"

here was an article from a few years ago that I'm sure was shared and discussed here where it was put in a good way that basically said the same thing, something about how 20 something start-up founders only knew how to create apps that solve the kinds of problems 20 something start-up founders have.

― dan selzer, Tuesday, March 2, 2021 10:02 AM (fifty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

My new idea is an app that will remind users to wash their ass every 24 hours

― Hello Nice FBI Lady (DJP), Tuesday, March 2, 2021 10:12 AM (forty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this reminds me of those companies that make purportedly antimicrobial shirts that won't stink if you wear them for two days. Like literally the only people who would care are coders glued to their desks and complete lazy slobs who still somehow care what they smell like.

you know who makes my antimicrobial shirts, is a collaboration between Samsung and Tide

It is for the best that I never moved to Silicon Valley because I would either be even more insufferable or in jail after freaking the fuck out and punching everyone in sight

complete lazy slobs who still somehow care what they smell like

my people

you know who makes my antimicrobial shirts, is a collaboration between Samsung and Tide

― Hello Nice FBI Lady (DJP), Tuesday, March 2, 2021 10:55 AM (fifty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Samsung x Tide

TidePods x Soylent

My GF forced me to listen to Conan O'Brien's podcast the other day, which was especially heavy on advertising. One 'service' he promoted was having a new car just delivered to your house. "No more boring trips to the dealer!" etc. etc.

I don't know who this is targeted to, but it's clearly not me.

certainly not the first to note the existence of that class of startups, and i did not come up with the name "MAAS", but it's a good one.

I thought a lot of the breathable shirts were marketed to people hiking/camping, but I think between my different online ad demographics I'm getting half outdoorsy types and half desk-bound coders and some brands are cross-marketing

it's aspirational -- the desk-bound coders are supposed to want to go hiking/camping and need a bona fide reason to buy these shirts, but instead, they don't and just, y'know, buy them to make up for not showering

well, I wear mostly merino wool shirts AND shower daily. so there!

#notalldeskboundcoders

baffler's not all bad... this is savage and i love it
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/how-to-become-an-intellectual-in-silicon-valley-timms

Join DocuSign executives, along with industry visionaries from Progressive and Arm, to discover how they are transforming their agreement process. You’ll also hear from singer/songwriters and inspiring speakers like Michael Franti and Mick Ebeling of Not Impossible Labs.

seriously, what happened to Michael Franti

I mean, Docusign is a pretty solid program as far as electronic signatures go but .... seriously ... ya, right?

"industry visionaries" = vomit all over myself

davey's link is indeed a pleasant read and highlights how much these dumb assholes are just 1970s/80s neoliberal chamber-of-commerce mouthpieces but with a fresh coat of rock-star paint plus ted talks and twitter.

There was a vinyl banner in SOMA San Francisco with some tech knob wearing a headset mic, and the pithy, airy quote: "We should only think of a technology as radical if it benefits every person on the planet."

And I thought "Bowls? Bowls is all I got. Maybe sandals?"

the wheel

the toilet

the smallpox vaccine

For real though instead of NFTs can't we just docusign stuff?

the toilet

xp - seriously, why isn't Grimes headlining the Docusign conference?

pic.twitter.com/mmdI3ioIOf

— Nitasha Tiku (@nitashatiku) March 12, 2021

I'm howling

is this intentional or unintentional comedy?

The North Sentinelese in the Andaman Islands don't have wheels or smallpox vaccines. They may have toilets and/or bowls, nobody knows.

The part about watching Jackson do design work live on twitch is the clincher.

why does she speak like TTS software?

This is extremely good and fascinating. Still not done with it:

https://www.thedigradio.com/podcast/counterculture-to-cyberculture-with-fred-turner/

Anyone gonna watch this? I don't know.. the founder guy looks kinda like the Night Stalker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVAESeO7dgc

Mind Capitalism: Braindreessen Horowitz pic.twitter.com/2OxuHn8r0s

— Ed Zitron (@edzitron) May 4, 2021

What?

Okay at first I thought it was inexplicable, then I thought it was some kind of sinister prank the universe was playing on me, but now I'm just really enjoying how dumb this tweet is. Man just had a thought and tweeted it without any of the wiser parts of the brain stepping in, they were just as transfixed as the rest of us.

this whole basecamp thing has been amazing

It's been a case study in how to set your company on fire

I’m learning some leadership lessons certainly, like “don’t call in to the very sensitive all-hands from bed”

my grad school adviser was a huge basecamp stan so I've been following it a bit, the whole thing to me really smacks of all the white tech guys I've encountered in undergrad/grad education at tech schools—the reactionary way of dealing with these conversations is basically an across-the-board thing, especially the general "I just want to build cool shit, why do we have to talk about things that are so ambiguous and divisive? also I have not experienced white supremacy or done it so it doesn't exist."