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It may be what people do on there is silly, but like this article says, the infrastructure software released by these companies have to deal with the number of

by iamwil 16y ago

It may be what people do on there is silly, but like this article says, the infrastructure software released by these companies have to deal with the number of users at scale is no easy feat. I know facebook and twitter regularly release open source software for infrastructure. Thrift from facebook (and I think Cassandra). And FlockDB from Twitter, if I'm not mistaken. Every other startup's boats rise due to these companies dealing with silly things.

_delirium 16y ago
That definitely does happen, but there does seem to be a decrease in companies built on tech innovation as their product. Infrastructure innovation while scaling up a product is still great, but somewhat different from inventing a technically new thing as the product. Not that classic Silicon Valley necessarily got the balance right, either: Xerox PARC is the canonical example of a place that was closer to 95% R&D, and 5% shipping profitable products based on that tech. But it seems at least possible that many companies are now swung towards the opposite side: 5% on inventing new tech, and 95% focus on productifying/monetizing existing tech by making nicely polished implementations, pushing it into new market segments, etc. That might also be fine so long as there's a bunch of unexploited tech lying out there, waiting for someone to turn it into profitable products, but who's going to keep replenishing those stocks of unexploited tech? Will that kind of R&D come exclusively from academic research and a few big industrial labs like MSR?
- iamwil 16y ago
  I think this is just the pendulum swinging back and forth. you'll get these cycles, as first, we innovate on basic tech, and then polish it and tighten it up, before innovating on basic tech again. Basic tech is still there. I think it's hard to know where to look, because like I said elsewhere, things that significantly change our lives in the future start off looking like toys, and not all toys end up significantly changing our lives. It only seems like we have no basic tech because we're either not looking there, or we're writing it off.

by iamwil 16y ago

_delirium 16y ago

That definitely does happen, but there does seem to be a decrease in companies built on tech innovation as their product. Infrastructure innovation while scaling up a product is still great, but somewhat different from inventing a technically new thing as the product. Not that classic Silicon Valley necessarily got the balance right, either: Xerox PARC is the canonical example of a place that was closer to 95% R&D, and 5% shipping profitable products based on that tech. But it seems at least possible that many companies are now swung towards the opposite side: 5% on inventing new tech, and 95% focus on productifying/monetizing existing tech by making nicely polished implementations, pushing it into new market segments, etc. That might also be fine so long as there's a bunch of unexploited tech lying out there, waiting for someone to turn it into profitable products, but who's going to keep replenishing those stocks of unexploited tech? Will that kind of R&D come exclusively from academic research and a few big industrial labs like MSR?

iamwil 16y ago
I think this is just the pendulum swinging back and forth. you'll get these cycles, as first, we innovate on basic tech, and then polish it and tighten it up, before innovating on basic tech again. Basic tech is still there. I think it's hard to know where to look, because like I said elsewhere, things that significantly change our lives in the future start off looking like toys, and not all toys end up significantly changing our lives. It only seems like we have no basic tech because we're either not looking there, or we're writing it off.