5 ms·

The New Masters of the Universe: From Silicon Valley, a New Elite Is Coming

33 points by nkurz 11y ago

loukrazy 11y ago
Is this just a rehash of the "economic civil war" article from a few weeks ago?
- hammock 11y ago
  Link?
  - psimyn 11y ago
    Probably this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10714292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10714292
- ChuckMcM 11y ago
  well a different flavor of it. Wealthy people being disrupted tend to get a lot of stuff written. It was the fundamental thesis of Naisbitt's Megatrends was that they were made visible by the amount of column inches spent on them in periodicals. Didn't matter positive or negative writing, if there were enough column inches being spent (editorial resource) there was something there[1] [1] https://books.google.com/books?id=ILJ_pfMgLqsC&pg=PA293&lpg=PA293&dq=column+inches+as+trend+indicator&source=bl&ots=yclPJEgfMY&sig=h2IkZFhxQEJ16T7TrOox97gaUvI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjI4Ie6z_3JAhVC9WMKHekYAeEQ6AEIOzAH#v=onepage&q=column%20inches%20as%20trend%20indicator&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=ILJ_pfMgLqsC&pg=PA293&lpg=...
chubot 11y ago
Aside from the somewhat out-of-place right wing tone, this is all basically true. About 5-6 years ago, it occurred to me that: - information is the new oil - politics is the exchange of power which implies: - in 2030 or so, we will have someone with a tech background as president. Why did we have George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush as presidents? Because they developed immense wealth through controlling the flow of oil around the globe. They went to Saudi Arabia and brought back oil. Then they exchanged this power for political power. Information is like oil in that everybody needs it. You can't build a house, open a restaurant, import shoes, etc. without energy, and you can't do any of it without information either. Whereas you can open a restaurant without building a house. These two things are special and fundamental. Now we have the flow of information concentrated in the hands of the very few. We rent our devices from Apple and Google, and they exercise control over what apps you run on it, and what content is surfaced through searches. Things that happen on Facebook can change the course of your life. In the near future, there will be undoubtedly be someone who exchanges this immense power for political power, just as the Bushes did. I'm not saying this is good or bad -- it's just a fact, in an almost mathematical sense.
- lsc 11y ago
  >We rent our devices from Apple and Google, and they exercise control over what apps you run on it, From my understanding, Apple is a little different in that as far as I can tell, they make money off of, you know, you - selling you things directly, not off of selling your information to third parties. I mean, they do control what you can and can't install on your device, but they do so not in service of collecting more data on you, but in service of getting you to buy more stuff from them. Because their money ultimately comes from you rather than from advertisers, they ultimately have different aims. (if this is wrong, please correct me.) This is relevant because Your whole thesis rests on the idea that the currently-popular business model of "give consumers free stuff in exchange for personal data" will remain stable, that the "advertising based" model will win over the apple model. And maybe it will. I don't know. But right now? it looks like the apple model has won the high end, while the "give you stuff in exchange for your personal information" dominates the low end. Now, personally, I wouldn't bet money that the current situation is stable; in part because of this huge economic inequality, and because the people you really want as customers are paying for the services with money rather than with personal information. There is an argument to be made that a lot of this personal data collected by the cellphone companies who make their money through collecting data is mostly personal data of the poor, because wealthier people use the cellphone company who charges you money. I mean, you could be right, certainly, but my point is just that things haven't settled out yet. We're still in the part of the economic cycle where we simply don't know what will stick after the "dumb money" leaves the system.
  - chubot 11y ago
    They are different, but Apple still exercises a high degree of control over what's in the App Store. There's no porn. They restrict the programming languages you can use, and AFAIK you can't make certain types of programming environments. You could argue that they are nibbling around the edges, and "most stuff you want" is in the App Store. But I still see it as a huge amount of control. They also seem to auto-complete what's typed into the Safari address bar, which heavily influences the sites you visit. And they choose the default search provider. Defaults matter. My thesis doesn't really rest on profit from advertising vs. devices. I agree that they are different, but I'm just saying that these companies have a lot of power in the abstract sense. True, some of that power could be more exchangeable for political power. Maybe Facebook and Google are more powerful politically than Apple, just because they deal more directly with information.
onesixtythree 11y ago
I sincerely hope not. Employee stack ranking just hurts a company but, if that mentality is applied to a country, then we're looking at a nightmare of historical proportions. Can you imagine what it would do to this country if 5% of people in a society had to be sent to camps? The tech oligarchs would be the worst leaders the Western World has seen for decades, if not centuries.
HillaryBriss 11y ago
This article has some interesting things to say, and paints a useful picture of California's politics. But, I think one of its flaws is that it lumps Tech and Entertainment/Media into the same category. These industries are somewhat different. For example, tech employment can be relatively robust for people in San Francisco and the Valley at the same time as Southern California's entertainment production workers are losing their jobs to other US states which offer relatively large tax incentives to production companies and studios. And, I think, as a point of comparison, it's interesting that, in recent years, the California legislature handed the entertainment industry a large boost in tax credits for productions it kept in state (as opposed to competitors like Louisiana and Georgia). And that's an important difference. I haven't seen the legislature giving, say, Yahoo, a special tax holiday if it can just get its act together and stop laying off people. And the state government's reaction to Uber has not been particularly friendly either. I see some antagonism to Tech in state and local government. And the Tech industry is still viewed as a monstrously fat tax cow by the government. Still, the article's portrait of California as a "bifurcated" economy has some truth. The state contains a huge number of poor and middle class people who do not directly benefit from "Software Valley's" jobs machine. (The main thing they receive from it is some government services paid for by taxes on that machine's workers.)
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  >And, I think, as a point of comparison, it's interesting that, in recent years, the California legislature handed the entertainment industry a large boost in tax credits for productions it kept in state (as opposed to competitors like Louisiana and Georgia). What I always wonder is how Silicon Valley can have such an utterly monstrous cost of living problem, exacerbated by public policies that explicitly favor landowners and incumbent residents over scrappy young arrivals with new ideas and small budgets, and the tech industry doesn't just move somewhere cheaper out of sheer self-interest.
  - emgeee 11y ago
    The land owners and incumbents are the ones that provide the funding and expertise
blisterpeanuts 11y ago
Then again, it's possible that a new paradigm is right around the corner and will fundamentally disrupt everyone including the Silicon Valley elite. Of course, most of us have no idea what it will be -- some radical advance in biotech such as CRISPR[1], huge advances in 3-D printing, virtual reality workplaces, cold fusion, discovering and harnessing gravitons, virtually-sentient robotic devices, teleportation of physical objects.... When this happens--and given the rate of acceleration of new discoveries in our hyper-connected, 24x7 world, it's definitely "when" and not "if"--we will experience massive economic disruption that will be exploited by a new generation of visionaries. Those visionaries won't necessarily be the same people who are really good with javascript. It will be yet another class, and the javascript folks will become the elders, like Gates and Ellison. Should be an interesting time; hope I'm around to see it and take part in it! 1. http://www.nature.com/news/crispr-the-disruptor-1.17673 http://www.nature.com/news/crispr-the-disruptor-1.17673

33 points by nkurz 11y ago

loukrazy 11y ago

Is this just a rehash of the "economic civil war" article from a few weeks ago?

hammock 11y ago
Link?
- psimyn 11y ago
  Probably this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10714292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10714292
ChuckMcM 11y ago
well a different flavor of it. Wealthy people being disrupted tend to get a lot of stuff written. It was the fundamental thesis of Naisbitt's Megatrends was that they were made visible by the amount of column inches spent on them in periodicals. Didn't matter positive or negative writing, if there were enough column inches being spent (editorial resource) there was something there[1] [1] https://books.google.com/books?id=ILJ_pfMgLqsC&pg=PA293&lpg=PA293&dq=column+inches+as+trend+indicator&source=bl&ots=yclPJEgfMY&sig=h2IkZFhxQEJ16T7TrOox97gaUvI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjI4Ie6z_3JAhVC9WMKHekYAeEQ6AEIOzAH#v=onepage&q=column%20inches%20as%20trend%20indicator&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=ILJ_pfMgLqsC&pg=PA293&lpg=...

chubot 11y ago

Aside from the somewhat out-of-place right wing tone, this is all basically true. About 5-6 years ago, it occurred to me that: - information is the new oil - politics is the exchange of power which implies: - in 2030 or so, we will have someone with a tech background as president. Why did we have George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush as presidents? Because they developed immense wealth through controlling the flow of oil around the globe. They went to Saudi Arabia and brought back oil. Then they exchanged this power for political power. Information is like oil in that everybody needs it. You can't build a house, open a restaurant, import shoes, etc. without energy, and you can't do any of it without information either. Whereas you can open a restaurant without building a house. These two things are special and fundamental. Now we have the flow of information concentrated in the hands of the very few. We rent our devices from Apple and Google, and they exercise control over what apps you run on it, and what content is surfaced through searches. Things that happen on Facebook can change the course of your life. In the near future, there will be undoubtedly be someone who exchanges this immense power for political power, just as the Bushes did. I'm not saying this is good or bad -- it's just a fact, in an almost mathematical sense.

lsc 11y ago
>We rent our devices from Apple and Google, and they exercise control over what apps you run on it, From my understanding, Apple is a little different in that as far as I can tell, they make money off of, you know, you - selling you things directly, not off of selling your information to third parties. I mean, they do control what you can and can't install on your device, but they do so not in service of collecting more data on you, but in service of getting you to buy more stuff from them. Because their money ultimately comes from you rather than from advertisers, they ultimately have different aims. (if this is wrong, please correct me.) This is relevant because Your whole thesis rests on the idea that the currently-popular business model of "give consumers free stuff in exchange for personal data" will remain stable, that the "advertising based" model will win over the apple model. And maybe it will. I don't know. But right now? it looks like the apple model has won the high end, while the "give you stuff in exchange for your personal information" dominates the low end. Now, personally, I wouldn't bet money that the current situation is stable; in part because of this huge economic inequality, and because the people you really want as customers are paying for the services with money rather than with personal information. There is an argument to be made that a lot of this personal data collected by the cellphone companies who make their money through collecting data is mostly personal data of the poor, because wealthier people use the cellphone company who charges you money. I mean, you could be right, certainly, but my point is just that things haven't settled out yet. We're still in the part of the economic cycle where we simply don't know what will stick after the "dumb money" leaves the system.
- chubot 11y ago
  They are different, but Apple still exercises a high degree of control over what's in the App Store. There's no porn. They restrict the programming languages you can use, and AFAIK you can't make certain types of programming environments. You could argue that they are nibbling around the edges, and "most stuff you want" is in the App Store. But I still see it as a huge amount of control. They also seem to auto-complete what's typed into the Safari address bar, which heavily influences the sites you visit. And they choose the default search provider. Defaults matter. My thesis doesn't really rest on profit from advertising vs. devices. I agree that they are different, but I'm just saying that these companies have a lot of power in the abstract sense. True, some of that power could be more exchangeable for political power. Maybe Facebook and Google are more powerful politically than Apple, just because they deal more directly with information.

onesixtythree 11y ago

I sincerely hope not. Employee stack ranking just hurts a company but, if that mentality is applied to a country, then we're looking at a nightmare of historical proportions. Can you imagine what it would do to this country if 5% of people in a society had to be sent to camps? The tech oligarchs would be the worst leaders the Western World has seen for decades, if not centuries.

HillaryBriss 11y ago

This article has some interesting things to say, and paints a useful picture of California's politics. But, I think one of its flaws is that it lumps Tech and Entertainment/Media into the same category. These industries are somewhat different. For example, tech employment can be relatively robust for people in San Francisco and the Valley at the same time as Southern California's entertainment production workers are losing their jobs to other US states which offer relatively large tax incentives to production companies and studios. And, I think, as a point of comparison, it's interesting that, in recent years, the California legislature handed the entertainment industry a large boost in tax credits for productions it kept in state (as opposed to competitors like Louisiana and Georgia). And that's an important difference. I haven't seen the legislature giving, say, Yahoo, a special tax holiday if it can just get its act together and stop laying off people. And the state government's reaction to Uber has not been particularly friendly either. I see some antagonism to Tech in state and local government. And the Tech industry is still viewed as a monstrously fat tax cow by the government. Still, the article's portrait of California as a "bifurcated" economy has some truth. The state contains a huge number of poor and middle class people who do not directly benefit from "Software Valley's" jobs machine. (The main thing they receive from it is some government services paid for by taxes on that machine's workers.)

eli_gottlieb 11y ago
>And, I think, as a point of comparison, it's interesting that, in recent years, the California legislature handed the entertainment industry a large boost in tax credits for productions it kept in state (as opposed to competitors like Louisiana and Georgia). What I always wonder is how Silicon Valley can have such an utterly monstrous cost of living problem, exacerbated by public policies that explicitly favor landowners and incumbent residents over scrappy young arrivals with new ideas and small budgets, and the tech industry doesn't just move somewhere cheaper out of sheer self-interest.
- emgeee 11y ago
  The land owners and incumbents are the ones that provide the funding and expertise

blisterpeanuts 11y ago

Then again, it's possible that a new paradigm is right around the corner and will fundamentally disrupt everyone including the Silicon Valley elite. Of course, most of us have no idea what it will be -- some radical advance in biotech such as CRISPR[1], huge advances in 3-D printing, virtual reality workplaces, cold fusion, discovering and harnessing gravitons, virtually-sentient robotic devices, teleportation of physical objects.... When this happens--and given the rate of acceleration of new discoveries in our hyper-connected, 24x7 world, it's definitely "when" and not "if"--we will experience massive economic disruption that will be exploited by a new generation of visionaries. Those visionaries won't necessarily be the same people who are really good with javascript. It will be yet another class, and the javascript folks will become the elders, like Gates and Ellison. Should be an interesting time; hope I'm around to see it and take part in it! 1. http://www.nature.com/news/crispr-the-disruptor-1.17673 http://www.nature.com/news/crispr-the-disruptor-1.17673