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You might want to say Silicon Valley had a good run or software as a service had a good run or mobile apps had a good run. But this is essentially saying the e

You might want to say Silicon Valley had a good run or software as a service had a good run or mobile apps had a good run. But this is essentially saying the end of tech is here. That’s like saying everything is now invented and there is nothing new to be discovered.

Barrin92 7y ago
That's not at all what the author is saying. He's saying that consumer attention and convenience has hit its limit. That's not the entire field of technology. Energy clean and too cheap to measure, faster construction, new modes of manufacturing, new medicines, efficiency of engines, new modes of transportation and propulsion and so on. You can easily imagine an entire array of things that would materially improve our lives and improve productivity through the entire economy, applicable even in rural places. What has probably reached its end is the zero-sum rent seeking enabled by platform owners and attention merchants. Maybe the Silicon Valley investors of this world will go back to the scifi of the 60s and try to come up with inventions that touch the physical world instead of continuing to pump money into the cyberpunk version of the future we've been trying to emulate for the last 20 years.
- roymurdock 7y ago
  We are currently seeing more of a diffusion of technology outside of the first world and a regression to the mean across economies than the breakout productivity growth we saw in the US/Europe/Japan post WWII So productivity growth is definitely happening globally, but generally by bringing existing tech to new geographies (usually combined with cheaper labor input and less regulation), or adapting existing technology to legacy processes in industrialized economies Investors are not returning to scifi of the 60s, just take a look at the latest YC demo day: loan due diligence, direct to consumer B2B platform, "AirBNB for electric chargers", online sales academy, contractor onboarding software - tech is truly focused on picking some huge TAM market and taking x% of that market from legacy competitors by having a narrow focus and adding "tech" to the offering [1] The lucrative place to be right now is private equity - there's so much money floating around for buying and selling companies right now ($2TN in uninvested "dry powder" at end of 2018). Why invent new products and companies when you could simply buy an existing business and cut costs to attain or boost profitability [1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/19/best-of-y-combinator/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/19/best-of-y-combinator/

Barrin92 7y ago

That's not at all what the author is saying. He's saying that consumer attention and convenience has hit its limit. That's not the entire field of technology. Energy clean and too cheap to measure, faster construction, new modes of manufacturing, new medicines, efficiency of engines, new modes of transportation and propulsion and so on. You can easily imagine an entire array of things that would materially improve our lives and improve productivity through the entire economy, applicable even in rural places. What has probably reached its end is the zero-sum rent seeking enabled by platform owners and attention merchants. Maybe the Silicon Valley investors of this world will go back to the scifi of the 60s and try to come up with inventions that touch the physical world instead of continuing to pump money into the cyberpunk version of the future we've been trying to emulate for the last 20 years.

roymurdock 7y ago
We are currently seeing more of a diffusion of technology outside of the first world and a regression to the mean across economies than the breakout productivity growth we saw in the US/Europe/Japan post WWII So productivity growth is definitely happening globally, but generally by bringing existing tech to new geographies (usually combined with cheaper labor input and less regulation), or adapting existing technology to legacy processes in industrialized economies Investors are not returning to scifi of the 60s, just take a look at the latest YC demo day: loan due diligence, direct to consumer B2B platform, "AirBNB for electric chargers", online sales academy, contractor onboarding software - tech is truly focused on picking some huge TAM market and taking x% of that market from legacy competitors by having a narrow focus and adding "tech" to the offering [1] The lucrative place to be right now is private equity - there's so much money floating around for buying and selling companies right now ($2TN in uninvested "dry powder" at end of 2018). Why invent new products and companies when you could simply buy an existing business and cut costs to attain or boost profitability [1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/19/best-of-y-combinator/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/19/best-of-y-combinator/