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And once again the tech workforce wakes up in the gutter wearing clown makeup and wondering what happened. In a functioning economic regulatory environment the

by olefoo 6y ago

And once again the tech workforce wakes up in the gutter wearing clown makeup and wondering what happened. In a functioning economic regulatory environment the whole "Spend big money upfront to Capture & Control $MARKET" game would have been illegal from the get go. We would have had a much greater variety of companies and a much greater variety of size of companies. But, hey. Here we are. In the gutter. Covered in slapstick.

achillesheels 6y ago
By your reasoning Intel would have never been created. QED.
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  Who's to say that wouldn't have been a better world, technologically speaking? Who's to say Intel's market dominance was a good thing? I thought it was a truism in tech that monocultures are a bad thing?
  - achillesheels 6y ago
    I think the more pertinent focus is to ask: was Intel created naturally or artificially? To that, we must look at its effects on human civilization, including the compounding network effects on the Valley. I see its merits as natural and therefore, per Aristotle, necessary. So I can't consider a parallel universe where Intel is not a wealth creation signal which causes the venture capital industry to grow to the point where now every cosmopolis has some sort of VC Fund.
    - Apocryphon 6y ago
      It's easy to get sucked into counterfactuals, which are fun hypotheticals but sort of useless in debate. Yet one has to consider- if Intel was never created, wouldn't someone else simply have invented the microprocessor technologies they created? Were there not competitors? It seems inevitable.
      - achillesheels 6y ago
        I remember from a Nova special that TI was actually right there with the planar lithographic technique. And yes, I am also of the position that their R&D was really more like "intrinsic value exploration" - microprocessors being an inevitable necessity for advancing the state of the art of human civilization, so there is a first mover advantage. But this is where "risk-taking" is so underrated, even in a "swingin' dick" American culture, there aren't many of those types in EE departments and Bell Labs! So, while I would argue it was practical necessity to mass fabricate central signal processing units, gunning for that opportunity would be reserved for a self-selected population pool, which Nature has determined to be those already opting to be mavericks when launching Shockley Semiconductor.
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    For better or worse economies of scale with increasingly large upfront costs and low unit cost are what sustainably drive dominance and thus lead to a "monoculture" as a better strategy until they squander it sufficiently to be overtaken. The truism is a bit off as well given the difference between "defacto standard" and "monoculture". Of course not all monocultures are equal as well - commerical monopoly vertical intergrated, horizontal like ARM style designs made by others, open standards used by all, etc.

by olefoo 6y ago

achillesheels 6y ago

By your reasoning Intel would have never been created. QED.

Apocryphon 6y ago
Who's to say that wouldn't have been a better world, technologically speaking? Who's to say Intel's market dominance was a good thing? I thought it was a truism in tech that monocultures are a bad thing?
- achillesheels 6y ago
  I think the more pertinent focus is to ask: was Intel created naturally or artificially? To that, we must look at its effects on human civilization, including the compounding network effects on the Valley. I see its merits as natural and therefore, per Aristotle, necessary. So I can't consider a parallel universe where Intel is not a wealth creation signal which causes the venture capital industry to grow to the point where now every cosmopolis has some sort of VC Fund.
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    It's easy to get sucked into counterfactuals, which are fun hypotheticals but sort of useless in debate. Yet one has to consider- if Intel was never created, wouldn't someone else simply have invented the microprocessor technologies they created? Were there not competitors? It seems inevitable.
    - achillesheels 6y ago
      I remember from a Nova special that TI was actually right there with the planar lithographic technique. And yes, I am also of the position that their R&D was really more like "intrinsic value exploration" - microprocessors being an inevitable necessity for advancing the state of the art of human civilization, so there is a first mover advantage. But this is where "risk-taking" is so underrated, even in a "swingin' dick" American culture, there aren't many of those types in EE departments and Bell Labs! So, while I would argue it was practical necessity to mass fabricate central signal processing units, gunning for that opportunity would be reserved for a self-selected population pool, which Nature has determined to be those already opting to be mavericks when launching Shockley Semiconductor.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  For better or worse economies of scale with increasingly large upfront costs and low unit cost are what sustainably drive dominance and thus lead to a "monoculture" as a better strategy until they squander it sufficiently to be overtaken. The truism is a bit off as well given the difference between "defacto standard" and "monoculture". Of course not all monocultures are equal as well - commerical monopoly vertical intergrated, horizontal like ARM style designs made by others, open standards used by all, etc.