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Though PG specifically mentioned politics, I took away the message that any person or group with $30 million could do it, if they wanted. Is it likely that some

Though PG specifically mentioned politics, I took away the message that any person or group with $30 million could do it, if they wanted. Is it likely that someone cares enough about a specific place to to altruistically transform it into Silicon Valley? Probably not (maybe in a seasteading future?), but nor is this politically feasible. So, it's just fun to think about.

pg 18y ago
That is a very interesting idea. I didn't think of that. You could do the 30-startup experiment with private money. And what pressure it would put on the city if it succeeded. Thanks for this idea. I just added a paragraph to the essay mentioning it.
- alabut 18y ago
  Is this the first time you've edited an already-published essay because of feedback on HN?
  - pg 18y ago
    No, I've done that a couple times before.
    - alabut 18y ago
      That's a great use of crowdsourcing for your editing. I wonder how that could work in a more automated and scalable way. I'm thinking something similar to Etherpad, but with feedback rather than actual edits, like if people could leave comments and suggestions inline, with some kind of HN-style upvoting and troll-flagging. Then the originating author could cherrypick the best suggestions into being actual edits. Something like Wikipedia but more reader-friendly, without infinite levels of backwards revisions. Or that could be stupid in practice, maybe a handful of close associates with honest feedback is way better than taking all comers.
      - megamark16 18y ago
        I've actually considered this as a startup idea, except they would be actual news articles about local events or occurrences. Instead of interviewing witnesses to a local house fire or bank holdup the witnesses would just log on and add their witness accounts to articles, and people could attach pictures and videos as well (hey, everyone has a camera phone these days). Of course everything (articles, witness accounts, pictures and videos, etc) would all be user moderated and up or down modded, so if someone posts an account that seems less then verifiable then it could get downmodded. The user base would also act as editor, so people can suggest spelling/grammatical changes and other users can up or down mod specific changes. It would require an enormously involved user base but imagine getting news reports directly from the people seeing it happen. Later Mark
bd 18y ago
Is it likely that someone cares enough about a specific place to to altruistically transform it into Silicon Valley? There should be a quite large pool of people that have spare $30 million [1]. Creating new Silicon Valley sounds like a much better vanity project than, for example, space tourism (one trip is $20 - 28 million). ----- [1] It seems like there is ~95,000 people in the world with net worth $30 million or more (out of which 1,125 are billionaires with accumulated wealth of $4.4 trillion). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billionaire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billionaire

pg 18y ago

That is a very interesting idea. I didn't think of that. You could do the 30-startup experiment with private money. And what pressure it would put on the city if it succeeded. Thanks for this idea. I just added a paragraph to the essay mentioning it.

alabut 18y ago
Is this the first time you've edited an already-published essay because of feedback on HN?
- pg 18y ago
  No, I've done that a couple times before.
  - alabut 18y ago
    That's a great use of crowdsourcing for your editing. I wonder how that could work in a more automated and scalable way. I'm thinking something similar to Etherpad, but with feedback rather than actual edits, like if people could leave comments and suggestions inline, with some kind of HN-style upvoting and troll-flagging. Then the originating author could cherrypick the best suggestions into being actual edits. Something like Wikipedia but more reader-friendly, without infinite levels of backwards revisions. Or that could be stupid in practice, maybe a handful of close associates with honest feedback is way better than taking all comers.
    - megamark16 18y ago
      I've actually considered this as a startup idea, except they would be actual news articles about local events or occurrences. Instead of interviewing witnesses to a local house fire or bank holdup the witnesses would just log on and add their witness accounts to articles, and people could attach pictures and videos as well (hey, everyone has a camera phone these days). Of course everything (articles, witness accounts, pictures and videos, etc) would all be user moderated and up or down modded, so if someone posts an account that seems less then verifiable then it could get downmodded. The user base would also act as editor, so people can suggest spelling/grammatical changes and other users can up or down mod specific changes. It would require an enormously involved user base but imagine getting news reports directly from the people seeing it happen. Later Mark

bd 18y ago

Is it likely that someone cares enough about a specific place to to altruistically transform it into Silicon Valley? There should be a quite large pool of people that have spare $30 million [1]. Creating new Silicon Valley sounds like a much better vanity project than, for example, space tourism (one trip is $20 - 28 million). ----- [1] It seems like there is ~95,000 people in the world with net worth $30 million or more (out of which 1,125 are billionaires with accumulated wealth of $4.4 trillion). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billionaire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billionaire