8 ms·

Maybe because I love Greenwich Village, Jane Jacobs, and Henry Thoreau, or maybe because between Steve Jobs' and Bill Gates' legacies, I chose Richard Stallman'

by spodek 9y ago

Maybe because I love Greenwich Village, Jane Jacobs, and Henry Thoreau, or maybe because between Steve Jobs' and Bill Gates' legacies, I chose Richard Stallman's, but I've never felt any appeal from Silicon Valley. Maybe visiting might change my view, but the realizations in the article seem obvious and late enough that I think I understand the appeal but don't share the values.

EGreg 9y ago
What do you do in NYC? Do you think it's worth it to make a location-based social activity layer for existing social forums like HN? So people could meet up, date, hire for jobs etc. No one's actual location would be revealed. But when people post something, others would know they are probably nearby.
- OliverJones 9y ago
  With respect, that's been done. It was called Yik Yak. It was a disaster for the high school kids of my neighborhood; the geographic steering of messages allowed them to insult and stalk one another. The FOMO factor (fear of missing out) so carefully instilled in them by Instagram and the like made it very hard for them to just delete the app.
  - CydeWeys 9y ago
    That's not a fundamental flaw with the idea though, it's just that the specific community Yik Yak developed was terrible. You could do the same thing but have it target, say, LinkedIn's demographic instead of old-time MySpace's. There actually was a startup in DC that was doing something like this, called SocialRadar. They had a lot of funding but failed due to lack of adoption. They had a real name policy and didn't have any of the same problems that Yik Yak did.
- Clubber 9y ago
  As an interesting aside, that's how BBS's worked pre internet. Long distances calls were so expensive, BBS forums were largely localized. We would have get togethers and people's houses or at libraries, to meet each other once or twice a year, drink beer, play volleyball, etc.
  - EGreg 9y ago
    Why do you think the parent was so heavily downvoted?
    - Clubber 9y ago
      No friggin idea.
    - mantas 9y ago
      The NYC question did sound weird and somewhat like ad-hominem attack. You probably wanted to ask why OP found NYC better than SV? P.S. I didn't downvote vote
      - EGreg 9y ago
        Ah. I live in NYC and considered get together given the subject matter of the comment. I was asking the guy what kind of work he does. LOL.
deleted 9y ago
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deleted 9y ago
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wpietri 9y ago
There was a reply to this, now deleted, that I thought had an excellent point. I suspect the poster did not enjoy the immediate downvotes that come from criticizing Silicon Valley orthodoxies, so I want to paraphrase it. The poster, a European, said that one of the things they liked about HN was that when the discussion drifted too deep into an SV-centric view, people from other parts of the world would often provide a useful corrective that would then be upvoted. I appreciate that too, although as the treatment of the poster's comment demonstrated, it's not perfect. I think too many SV orthodoxies are vigorously defended here. The poster gave a footnote with a short list of what they called "Silicon Valley mindcuffs", and I suspect that's what got the instant downvotes.
- killjoywashere 9y ago
  What were the mindcuffs?! Examples? What a great word!
  - wpietri 9y ago
    I wanted to strike a balance between conveying the point and respecting the poster's deletion, so I left out those specifics. But I hope the poster turns that list into an expanded essay; I thought they were great. And yes, I loved the word.
  - bertil 9y ago
    Common ones: everyone speaks English or pays in dollars. People are not familiar with Chinese internet, or even non-American-centric companies. People have access to some local service (typically delivery services or local chains) or are familiar with their idiosyncrasies, including Amazon (Amazon is only present in 11 countries https://services.amazon.com/global-selling/global-selling-guide.html https://services.amazon.com/global-selling/global-selling-gu...). Issues around food or water quality are very local; American conspiracy tropes. Less common are understanding of legal issues, typically common law needs at least one case to clarify an issue as opposed to positive law countries; the right to bear arms is a big one, so is American-style freedom-of-speech. More specific are things like: non-American universities provide a good education, non-American companies can innovate meaningfully, tipping is omnipresent in services, keyboard layouts, American references in literature, sport, movies, etc. One of the latest obvious examples of such mindcuffs outside of HN is Apple’s announcement around battery replacement: it’s impossible to find conditions that are not meant for the US market. You can redirect the offer to local stores or find it there. That is actually quite typical of Apple, in spite of 60% of their sales being outside of the US. I have made the mistake to point at similar mindcuffs on HN and I will not do it again.
amelius 9y ago
The (disruptive) power of Silicon Valley stems mainly from investors. Make a pile of money high enough, and you can disrupt anything; that's the premise, basically. It is not really the power of tech that we should be worried about, but instead the power of investment without regard for anything other than shareholder returns. Google and Facebook could be better companies if they didn't have to sell their users to their real customers.
- moretai 9y ago
  I'm sorry, but this comment is just beautiful
- dwaltrip 9y ago
  The money doesn't do it alone. You can't have technological disruption without technology.
  - rhizome 9y ago
    What technology has Facebook given us besides React, a PHP compiler and low-power server racks? For that matter, what does Facebook even disrupt? I venture that the technology is usually already there, but the business exploitation is what's different in the dominant companies.
    - dwaltrip 9y ago
      Facebook operates mostly in the realm of social communication/organization and general information sharing, so that is where the "disruption" would take place. I'm rather skeptical of Facebook though. I think there are major issues with its current incarnation.
      - rhizome 9y ago
        Facebook operates mostly in the realm of social communication/organization and general information sharing, so that is where the "disruption" would take place. Sure, but GP was talking about technological disruption.
doug1001 9y ago
i doubt visiting would change your view, because your view--ie, what is the "appeal" and the "values" sounds about right. I've been here eight years and if there's some magic, i haven't seen it yet--just stale ideas conceived in isolation and enough frantic iteration to convince someone to pay for more adolescent experiment

by spodek 9y ago

EGreg 9y ago

What do you do in NYC? Do you think it's worth it to make a location-based social activity layer for existing social forums like HN? So people could meet up, date, hire for jobs etc. No one's actual location would be revealed. But when people post something, others would know they are probably nearby.

OliverJones 9y ago
With respect, that's been done. It was called Yik Yak. It was a disaster for the high school kids of my neighborhood; the geographic steering of messages allowed them to insult and stalk one another. The FOMO factor (fear of missing out) so carefully instilled in them by Instagram and the like made it very hard for them to just delete the app.
- CydeWeys 9y ago
  That's not a fundamental flaw with the idea though, it's just that the specific community Yik Yak developed was terrible. You could do the same thing but have it target, say, LinkedIn's demographic instead of old-time MySpace's. There actually was a startup in DC that was doing something like this, called SocialRadar. They had a lot of funding but failed due to lack of adoption. They had a real name policy and didn't have any of the same problems that Yik Yak did.
Clubber 9y ago
As an interesting aside, that's how BBS's worked pre internet. Long distances calls were so expensive, BBS forums were largely localized. We would have get togethers and people's houses or at libraries, to meet each other once or twice a year, drink beer, play volleyball, etc.
- EGreg 9y ago
  Why do you think the parent was so heavily downvoted?
  - Clubber 9y ago
    No friggin idea.
  - mantas 9y ago
    The NYC question did sound weird and somewhat like ad-hominem attack. You probably wanted to ask why OP found NYC better than SV? P.S. I didn't downvote vote
    - EGreg 9y ago
      Ah. I live in NYC and considered get together given the subject matter of the comment. I was asking the guy what kind of work he does. LOL.

deleted 9y ago

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deleted 9y ago

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wpietri 9y ago

There was a reply to this, now deleted, that I thought had an excellent point. I suspect the poster did not enjoy the immediate downvotes that come from criticizing Silicon Valley orthodoxies, so I want to paraphrase it. The poster, a European, said that one of the things they liked about HN was that when the discussion drifted too deep into an SV-centric view, people from other parts of the world would often provide a useful corrective that would then be upvoted. I appreciate that too, although as the treatment of the poster's comment demonstrated, it's not perfect. I think too many SV orthodoxies are vigorously defended here. The poster gave a footnote with a short list of what they called "Silicon Valley mindcuffs", and I suspect that's what got the instant downvotes.

killjoywashere 9y ago
What were the mindcuffs?! Examples? What a great word!
- wpietri 9y ago
  I wanted to strike a balance between conveying the point and respecting the poster's deletion, so I left out those specifics. But I hope the poster turns that list into an expanded essay; I thought they were great. And yes, I loved the word.
- bertil 9y ago
  Common ones: everyone speaks English or pays in dollars. People are not familiar with Chinese internet, or even non-American-centric companies. People have access to some local service (typically delivery services or local chains) or are familiar with their idiosyncrasies, including Amazon (Amazon is only present in 11 countries https://services.amazon.com/global-selling/global-selling-guide.html https://services.amazon.com/global-selling/global-selling-gu...). Issues around food or water quality are very local; American conspiracy tropes. Less common are understanding of legal issues, typically common law needs at least one case to clarify an issue as opposed to positive law countries; the right to bear arms is a big one, so is American-style freedom-of-speech. More specific are things like: non-American universities provide a good education, non-American companies can innovate meaningfully, tipping is omnipresent in services, keyboard layouts, American references in literature, sport, movies, etc. One of the latest obvious examples of such mindcuffs outside of HN is Apple’s announcement around battery replacement: it’s impossible to find conditions that are not meant for the US market. You can redirect the offer to local stores or find it there. That is actually quite typical of Apple, in spite of 60% of their sales being outside of the US. I have made the mistake to point at similar mindcuffs on HN and I will not do it again.

amelius 9y ago

The (disruptive) power of Silicon Valley stems mainly from investors. Make a pile of money high enough, and you can disrupt anything; that's the premise, basically. It is not really the power of tech that we should be worried about, but instead the power of investment without regard for anything other than shareholder returns. Google and Facebook could be better companies if they didn't have to sell their users to their real customers.

moretai 9y ago
I'm sorry, but this comment is just beautiful
dwaltrip 9y ago
The money doesn't do it alone. You can't have technological disruption without technology.
- rhizome 9y ago
  What technology has Facebook given us besides React, a PHP compiler and low-power server racks? For that matter, what does Facebook even disrupt? I venture that the technology is usually already there, but the business exploitation is what's different in the dominant companies.
  - dwaltrip 9y ago
    Facebook operates mostly in the realm of social communication/organization and general information sharing, so that is where the "disruption" would take place. I'm rather skeptical of Facebook though. I think there are major issues with its current incarnation.
    - rhizome 9y ago
      Facebook operates mostly in the realm of social communication/organization and general information sharing, so that is where the "disruption" would take place. Sure, but GP was talking about technological disruption.

doug1001 9y ago

i doubt visiting would change your view, because your view--ie, what is the "appeal" and the "values" sounds about right. I've been here eight years and if there's some magic, i haven't seen it yet--just stale ideas conceived in isolation and enough frantic iteration to convince someone to pay for more adolescent experiment