4 ms·

Yours is a solid neo-liberal explanation that ignores one important fact: so much of what's online is not market-driven. It cannot survive in the steady-state o

Yours is a solid neo-liberal explanation that ignores one important fact: so much of what's online is not market-driven. It cannot survive in the steady-state on it's own. Much of it is investor funded. It's someone's best guess about what the public will find acceptable. And then, remarkably, these guesses are used by others to triangulate their own guesses, and you get something like a "UX bubble" divorced from economic reality. (A variant: content tech enthusiasts create without profit motive (and therefore without market correction). OSS components being the preeminent example - although github has done a good job commoditizing the design around distributing such things. But these also create bubbles, of a different kind.)

edanm 5y ago
I'm not sure about the impact of VCs here. For all their power, I think most people's biggest interactions on the web are with Facebook, Youtube, Amazon and Google. Do you have any good examples of VC-funded UX experiences that fairly prevalent?
- javajosh 5y ago
  The OP is not a blog post, but an Ask HN participant. Most of the poeple on this site are building VC-funded UX, and are early-adopters of the same. My comment is addressed to them, not most people. Additionally, it is beyond my ken to even begin to comment on the bigness of people's interactions with anything, in general.
ModernMech 5y ago
> (A variant: content tech enthusiasts create without profit motive (and therefore without market correction) I would not agree that the consequence of lacking a profit motive is an absence of corrective market forces. There are many kinds of markets out there, and many kinds of market forces that aren't related to monetary profit. For example, the marketplace of ideas is very powerful for people without a profit motive -- they toil in order to earn currency in their communities, which can be something as trivial as Github stars.
- javajosh 5y ago
  Very true, although it is an embarrassing thing to admit (for me, anyway). Although, now that it comes to it I wonder: is it really something to be embarrassed about, to care about github stars more than zeroes in your bank account, and the wonderful things that gets you? Will not the stars really and truly affect more people more meaningfully than the zeroes? I suppose in the end it's a struggle between pleasure and vanity, as always.
  - ModernMech 5y ago
    Tell me about it, I definitely look at my stars every day, and get overjoyed when even a single person stars one of my projects. I feel this is a little more justified than the dopamine rush caused by a like on a tweet, because I put so much effort into the underlying software project (as opposed to the thoughtless, throwaway effort spent on most tweets and fb posts). That's why I think you shouldn't be embarrassed about putting weight on such a thing. I need food and electricity to power my body and computer. But I also need external validation to power my ego. The software doesn't get written if I don't think it's a good idea and worth doing, no matter how full my belly is.

edanm 5y ago

I'm not sure about the impact of VCs here. For all their power, I think most people's biggest interactions on the web are with Facebook, Youtube, Amazon and Google. Do you have any good examples of VC-funded UX experiences that fairly prevalent?

javajosh 5y ago
The OP is not a blog post, but an Ask HN participant. Most of the poeple on this site are building VC-funded UX, and are early-adopters of the same. My comment is addressed to them, not most people. Additionally, it is beyond my ken to even begin to comment on the bigness of people's interactions with anything, in general.

ModernMech 5y ago

> (A variant: content tech enthusiasts create without profit motive (and therefore without market correction) I would not agree that the consequence of lacking a profit motive is an absence of corrective market forces. There are many kinds of markets out there, and many kinds of market forces that aren't related to monetary profit. For example, the marketplace of ideas is very powerful for people without a profit motive -- they toil in order to earn currency in their communities, which can be something as trivial as Github stars.

javajosh 5y ago
Very true, although it is an embarrassing thing to admit (for me, anyway). Although, now that it comes to it I wonder: is it really something to be embarrassed about, to care about github stars more than zeroes in your bank account, and the wonderful things that gets you? Will not the stars really and truly affect more people more meaningfully than the zeroes? I suppose in the end it's a struggle between pleasure and vanity, as always.
- ModernMech 5y ago
  Tell me about it, I definitely look at my stars every day, and get overjoyed when even a single person stars one of my projects. I feel this is a little more justified than the dopamine rush caused by a like on a tweet, because I put so much effort into the underlying software project (as opposed to the thoughtless, throwaway effort spent on most tweets and fb posts). That's why I think you shouldn't be embarrassed about putting weight on such a thing. I need food and electricity to power my body and computer. But I also need external validation to power my ego. The software doesn't get written if I don't think it's a good idea and worth doing, no matter how full my belly is.