The thesis is that Silicon Valley is repackaging unglamourous, tried-and-true ideas in hipster-friendly format, i.e., by disparaging the mainstream delivery of

The thesis is that Silicon Valley is repackaging unglamourous, tried-and-true ideas in hipster-friendly format, i.e., by disparaging the mainstream delivery of the equivalent services. The author asserts that this methodology is shallow, transparent, and elitist. Soylent is Slimfast, Airbnb is vacation rental, Tinder is personals... It is abrasive, but he's got a (rather recycled) point. I'm not sure if the abrasive tone is intrinsic or simply giving his target a taste of its own medicine. The Soylent snippets really are a little ridiculous. "The home manufacturing center had been by far the most liberating to eliminate..." Allow me to bear your burden of having a refrigerator... I get turned off by a lot of technocrat stuff, too. I do think that Uber and Airbnb are novel ways of delivering old services. I huff at Airbnb when I get the marketing emails about being in a caring world and all that stuff. The takeaway, for me, is that with the proliferation of all of this new tech, the average consumer is becoming more keen to grandiose claims. Don't tell me that Soylent is a revolution and that I ought to have ditched my oven; tell me why it's a better product than Slimfast, because that's what you're really up against.