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The Tech Gold Rush Is Over. Where's the Next One?
- _nalply 3y agoPerhaps the next gold rush is tailored manufacturing. For example for food. Let's imagine Catalan crème brûlée. Have sliders where you can adjust the sweetness of the curd, the darkness of the caramel, and so on. Okay, perhaps food is not such a good example. But perhaps there are industries where people really need this and are willing to decide on a lot of details. Or perhaps for food, have a default setting for the majority. I don't know.
- pg_1234 3y agohttps://archive.ph/HwgNp https://archive.ph/HwgNp
- ahmedhosssam 3y agoThank you.
- monsterofcookie 3y agoIt's over people, go home
- mips_r4300i 3y agoThe hypothesis is that because of the very recent interest rate hikes and VC pullback, tech is now over, and the hot money will be in another field. Seems like a stretch, why would high tech salaries and another bubble not get created yet again? Already happened with dotcom and then up to now.
- somewhereoutth 3y agoDot com and the recent boom were because of the introduction of society changing technologies - specifically the internet, and the internet in your pocket. Not sure where the next revolution may come from (no, 'AI' is not it). It may be that tech will be like banking is today, still lucrative but not revolutionary/in the public eye as it was (as I understand it, banking went through it's boom in the 80s, hence Wolf of Wall Street, but I'm ready to be corrected on that).
- cma 3y ago> no, 'AI' is not it Can you expand on this? The pace of improvement is insane. And we've barely started training on video but that is clearly imminent with big implications for robotics and entertainment.
- robbyking 3y agoI agree 100%! A couple years ago I would have guessed that it would take us decades to get where we are now. The new Copilot integration into Office 365 (I can't believe I'm saying this!) looks fantastic, and even though a lot of my coworkers are skeptical, I really like using AI to help me with dev work. It doesn't do tasks for me, but it definitely helps speeds things along. I think there's going to be a huge demand for engineers who can help integrate AI into software, regardless of the field its used in.
- l33t7332273 3y ago>no, 'AI' is not it That seems premature. Maybe decoder transformer models aren’t it, but AI is almost absurdly broad as a field hence requires near omniscience to write off wholesale.
- emodendroket 3y agoIf we define it broadly enough then sure the claim is unfalsifiable.
- cryptoz 3y agoAI is already it.
- unoti 3y ago> Not sure where the next revolution may come from (no, 'AI' is not it). Not sure why you say this; are you sure AI can or should be so easily dismissed out of hand without further thoughts? --- The assertion that "AI is not it" when considering the next revolution is a point of debate. While it's true that AI hasn't yet led to a socio-economic transformation on the scale of the internet or mobile technology, it is still in the early stages of its potential impact. AI and machine learning are already influencing many industries, from healthcare with predictive diagnostics to transportation with autonomous vehicles, and their capabilities are rapidly advancing. The part below "---" above was written by ChatGPT, to help underscore my point.
- I_Am_Nous 3y agoThere's a lot of places software can go, but currently hardware is pretty incrementally better and better. We are also getting close to the limit of how small circuits can be so the visible "runway" of tech doesn't appear to be as profitable as it once was. So now the focus of the people in the markets appears to be expanding their existing business, rather than building entire new market segments with a new killer app/product. We are in the "boring, reliable" hardware stage where nothing is very exciting in addition to the rate hikes, so there isn't as much willingness to invest in anything risky. Pushing entrenched businesses to raise rates and enshitify is much easier to do than getting them to actually invent something new or worthwhile. Of course, we couldn't have conceived of today's technology 100 years ago, so in 100 years we may have discovered some novel material that allows for tighter circuitry OR we'll move to biological computers or something similar.
- fallingknife 3y agoWe already have discovered such a material and it's hardly exotic. Graphite chips can be clocked a couple orders of magnitude faster than silicon. The issue is manufacturing them.
- I_Am_Nous 3y agoThat sounds like relevant tech that could take off if there's enough investment, but isn't likely to see returns for years to come...the exact kind of thing VC seems allergic to. The bleeding edge is expensive to cut and companies are still reeling from their overly enthusiastic hiring sprees so I hope in a couple of years they will have sorted house and start paying people to play with the future.
- Apocryphon 3y agoI’m still disappointed we’re not exploring photonic circuitry or DNA computing or all the gee whiz speculative fiction post-silicon ideas from twenty years ago.
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- Der_Einzige 3y agoGenerative AI is immune to high interest rates.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hagbarth 3y agoWasn’t tech pronounced dead after the dot com bubble burst and then again after the financial crisis (rip good times). It seems to me that the reports of tech’s death greatly exaggerated.
- throwawaysleep 3y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/rkvwv5/daily_mail_21_years_ago_internet_may_be_just_a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/rkvwv...
- switchbak 3y agoTech is dead, sorry everyone. On the upside, suits are making a corporate comeback!
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y agoI even have the book After the Gold Rush https://www.amazon.com/After-Gold-Rush-Profession-Engineering/dp/0735608776 https://www.amazon.com/After-Gold-Rush-Profession-Engineerin...
- pydry 3y agoIf Microsoft hadn't been pulled back from absolute dominance in the early 00s by the justice department I think the tech ecosystem could easily have waned and become a shadow of what it ended up being. The end of the gold rush doesn't require us to run out of ways to innovate - all it requires is that enough market power is consolidated in one place that competition from non-billionaires can be squashed like a bug. Then there's no point for anybody to innovate any more. Remember the auto industry used to have garage-started startups too. A long time ago. Start an innovative new tire company now and you'll either be bought for a pittance or copied by one of the big 3. They are also your main customers. It isn't a hopeful play. There aren't too many VCs looking for small auto industry startups to fund. There aren't too many auto startups in detroit. How many things can you build for customers these days in tech that don't end up living on one of 4 megalithic platforms? It's not like the auto industry yet but it is headed in that direction.
- rwmj 3y ago
- paxys 3y agoFunny they say that while we are literally in the middle of an AI gold rush. Before this there was crypto. After AI there will be something else. Tech is always going to attract ambitious young people looking to make it big, financially or otherwise.
- clpm4j 3y agoYep, this is definitely the end of technological progress. A Bloomberg Opinion columnist says so.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- greatpostman 3y agoNo new technology! It’s over! AI isn’t a thing!
- ai-epiphany 3y agoit almost feels like we live in parallel universes there has never been this many opportunities in tech with the recent ai boom
- layer8 3y agoUsername checks out.
- Devasta 3y agoIf I go away and invent some cool widget tomorrow that becomes popular, I now need to start looking at additional assembly lines, parts suppliers, customs forms, and all that stuff. If I have some stupid software bullshit, like ChatGPT for cats or something, it can be as easy as putting a credit card into AWS to serve double the customers in seconds. So long as that is the case, there'll always be pile of VC cash looking to jump into tech.
- tempsy 3y agoI think the claim is it's harder to win the startup lotto now than in the 2010s, which I can see being the case, with the exception of a small number of AI cos. And at big cos it's harder to jump around as a means of increasing compensation than it used to be.
- woleium 3y agoDon’t forgot gets harder to jump around the older you get too, so there is likely some bias there.
- tempsy 3y agoNo this is true of most people. Offers have come down in general from the crazy 2021 peaks. Companies know they have leverage right now.
- ahmedhosssam 3y agoThis article was written in 2007: "Why to Not Not Start a Startup" http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html It says in 7.No Idea: > We're going to let people apply with no idea at all. If you want, you can answer the question on the application form that asks what you're going to do with "We have no idea." If you seem really good we'll accept you anyway. We're confident we can sit down with you and cook up some promising project. And we all know this is never gonna happen these days. So I think the claims of this article are not valid in 2023 right? Or at least most of it, especially something like "If you don't have an idea just apply and we will give you one!”.
- tony_cannistra 3y ago> it is human nature to chase fortune where you can alright, it's Friday - I'll bite. Really? Human nature to chase fortune?
- avelis 3y agoIt's capitalistic (greed) to chase fortune IMO.
- hcks 3y agoI love being poor and not able to own a home
- fallingknife 3y agoWhat is with this trend of calling things that happen in every human society ever "capitalist"?
- HideousKojima 3y agoGreed, self-interest, and selfishness were invented by Adam Smith, duh. In actuality I've seen internet communists regularly call clearcut examples of feudalism, mercantilism, and several other economic systems "capitalist." It often feels like they're not aware of any possible economic systems outside of capitalism and communism.
- pixelpoet 3y agoJust keep a little translation book in your head for modern speak; for example at this point "toxic" simply means "something I don't like", "literally" means figuratively, etc.
- marcusverus 3y agoIt’s a leftist shibboleth.
- robbyking 3y agoThe US economy has proven this pretty decisively. There's a reason we don't have single payer healthcare, or mandatory living wage, Super PAC contribution limits, or an ability to close tax loopholes for the rich.
- 2sk21 3y agoI worked in tech for thirty years and was able to retire comfortably. I was well paid but never had a spectacular salary - what worked was steady saving and investing.
- recursivedoubts 3y ago[flagged]
- furyofantares 3y agoComputing is still general purpose, global distribution is still easy, margins are still all profit, and software hasn't finished eating the world.
- atleastoptimal 3y agoTech is over?? Why has nobody told me about this?? We're moving to farming now?
- ahmedhosssam 3y agoThe article says that "tech will be like banking, so the opportunities won't be as crazy as these days", but I don't know if this is true or not, even the reality tells the opposite though.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sgammon 3y agoI say this every morning, when I wake up, like a mantra /s
- UncleOxidant 3y agoAhem... AI would like a word.
- datacruncher01 3y agoThe reality is there are very few other types of businesses where you can scale your product so cheaply and still save or increase productivity to justify high prices. Sure music and entertainment can scale but at the end of the day, it's regular people buying the product and there's only so much money there. It's a temporary issue, rates being what they are means money goes to easier profits. Just like the dotcom bust, it'll eventually make a comeback but good luck figuring out if your company will survive it.
- hotpotamus 3y ago> you can scale your product so cheaply and still save or increase productivity to justify high prices You've just nailed an aspect of the software industry that I've never understood; if it's so easy to cheaply scale a product, then what's preventing a competitor from charging a bit less and beating your high price?
- datacruncher01 3y agoNothing, that's why VCs will invest an enormous sum to grow faster than the competition to become the dominate player. Once established and people are used to the product other companies will struggle to compete against it without doing so purely on a cost cutting model that they can't sustain against bigger players. Problem for many companies is that they are in the middle of a constantly changing tech landscape and become obsoleted fairly quickly or try and use their size to artificially increase margins too much and allow for competitors to eat their market.
- layer8 3y agoRegulatory capture. Network effects. Bundling. Anti-competitive practices. Data moats. Patents. Domain expertise.
- pedalpete 3y agoDoes it matter how "tech" is defined? At one point in time, a pencil was considered tech, so when pens were invented, would the same people have said "tech is dead, people aren't interested in making pencils anymore!" Prior to the computer age, tech was aerospace, plastics. Sure the computer age brought a new large kind of tech, and that has been mined, but we are also entering a new phase where sensors are driving new capabilities in health[tech], space[tech] is no longer the domain of a few governments, transportation is being revolutionized [by tech]. With tech everywhere, nobody is going into "tech" they are going to work for companies making things, and those things either are tech or rely on tech. Also, with the value, or lack thereof, that universities are bringing to their students, do we care what industry's those students are going into? And the article doesn't say where they are going, just where they aren't going, so didn't add value.
- neilv 3y ago> Ambitious young people in search of their fortune once went into finance, then they tried tech, and now they’re looking for a new industry. For the sake of argument, let's assume that's true, and then I have a question. The "tech" field is full of people who went into it for the relatively easy high-paying jobs and/or the dotcom/startup lottery tickets. The field changed dramatically in the process, from the quality of the work we do, to our goals in doing it, to how we do it, to how and for what we hire. Is there any chance the field can suddenly improve now, due to this and other factors (e.g., let's say an interest in genuinely responsible infosec materializes someday)? Or is slow decay from the current state more likely (as current practices remain, but less money to go around)?
- layer8 3y agoA slow decay seems more likely, as the pioneer spirit seems to be largely gone, and complexity is killing us.
- Animats 3y agoAI is the next big thing, and no one really knows where that's going yet. Only AI offers the promise of large numbers of $150K - $300K soft office jobs. There's a fair amount of big stuff that's clearly on the path to success. Solar power. Wind power. Electric cars. But that involves real work and big companies are already doing it. There's stuff that's working well in prototype but costs too much. Self-driving cars (Waymo, not Tesla). Robotic farm machines. Takes large amounts of capital for marginal payoffs. There's stuff that works in prototype but hasn't scaled yet. Flying cars of the big electric drone type. Solid state batteries. Major technical problems lie ahead. Slow growth. There's natural resource stuff. Cobalt, lithium, rare earths. Hard work and boring, but profitable.
- jauntywundrkind 3y agoInstead of a gold rush, I'd rather build convivial technology we individuals & household can grow into and grow with. Tech as something built on high and delivered down has been the way of the past two decades, but I think that like writing computing is something that, in the long term is a powerful force for people. We need a more honest basis for man to meet machine to begin the real project, of Augmenting Intellect (Engelbart's mission).
- Apocryphon 3y agoReally sad that this comment is so low isn’t his thread. Prosocial optimism in tech is so rare to find.
- jauntywundrkind 3y agoAppreciate you! Thanks.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 3y agoThis says that interest rates are responsible for tech’s rise and fall, but doesn’t say anything specific to tech. Not super convincing. But if the world’s most type A people stopped coming here and distorting my local job market with 60-80 hour weeks that would be great news.
- leeeeeepw 3y ago[dead]