7 ms·

Silicon Valley Has an Arrogance Problem

71 points by jmacd 13y ago

paul_f 13y ago
Is there a single example of arrogance in this entire article? My guess is the headline write/editor was having a bad day. I don't think that was the intent of the writer.
- jmacd 13y ago
  It does feel a bit like the whole article is trying to justify the title. I think it should fall squarely under the Editorial byline...
  - vbuterin 13y ago
    It's an ideological bible-thumping parade. Every ideology has people who do these from time to time; progressives, conservatives, authoritarians, libertarians, everyone. The point is not to convey information; the point is to say (1) this threat exists, and (2) transmit the author's feeling of moral indignation to people who are on the same "moral wavelength". If you're an authoritarian, seeing some post on reason.com rambling about the evils of coercion will just seem silly to you; that's the point, you're not the target.
brandonb 13y ago
There's an excellent Quora thread on this with 34 answers: http://www.quora.com/Silicon-Valley/Why-are-so-many-people-in-Silicon-Valley-arrogant http://www.quora.com/Silicon-Valley/Why-are-so-many-people-i... People cite everything from arrogance as a defense mechanism against failure, to the necessity of entrepreneurial delusion, to youth, to denying that people in SV are arrogant at all.
- nextstep 13y ago
  And I think we're starting to see all those same arguments made here in this comment thread.
  - smtddr 13y ago
    I haven't even read the article, but I did just read this[1] and I agree very strongly that SV; particularly developers, are very difficult to approach. Everything & everyone is below them; not worth their time. If you lack any detail of some domain-knowledge of whatever treny new tech you're trying to ask about, you just get insulted(maybe accompanied by a vague hint at the answer). Basically, like this video[2]. 1. http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-confess-the-worst-things-about-working-at-google-2013-11?pundits_only=0&get_all_comments=1&no_reply_filter=1#comment-52768b7d69bedd692a53c738 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-confess-the-... 2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGkL6eQWOAI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGkL6eQWOAI 3. ...really? http://i.imgur.com/4aaH7GW.png http://i.imgur.com/4aaH7GW.png
michaelochurch 13y ago
Here's what really makes me angry. These jackasses who are going out and using technology's success to spout insane pro-rich politics, making asses of themselves in all sorts of creative ways (cf. Sean Parker's wedding, and that "jungle party" with the caged tiger) are a bunch of old-style corporate executives who, after invading technology, have given technologists a bad reputation in the country at large. Our image is being tainted by their arrogance. Look, it's not the nerdy engineers (the ones who love technology, who would be in it even if it weren't "hot") who are responsible for this crass, New Money horror-show. It's the carpetbaggers who failed into technology because banking, hedge funds, and consulting didn't want them. They don't really belong in the first place. They're an invasive species in tech, and they're the ones creating this arrogance problem. They capture the lion's share of the value, set themselves up as the elite (when tech is "hot") and make a whole set of unrelated people look bad. However, I agree. The Sand Hill Road elite is utterly unfit to manage a bag of rock salt, much less run the world. Those sad wankers built a society in the Bay Area where the software engineers building the place can't even buy a house-- and they want to call government ineffective? Crackah, please.
- yoloswag 13y ago
  Fuck Sand Hill Road, fuck TechCrunch, fuck YC, fuck every venture fund, accelerator, and all the hype. They are all distractions. All of them. If I start my own company I'm going to do it without all of that frivolous shit. I'm tired of disruption. I'm tired of "changing the world", "changing the way we X", and all the blithering idiots who made Snapchat a $4b company. Think about it. Dropbox, Facebook, Twitter and all of the other successful companies would have succeeded despite all of this shit. They were awesome ideas. They would have succeeded anyway. I refuse to participate. I'm tired of it. I can't be the only one who's disillusioned with all of this nonsense.
  - michaelochurch 13y ago
    It's like what the Republican Party did when it had a severe image problem (thanks to Bush) and needed to invent the Tea Party: a 180-degree change in image, a "revolution" of style without substance. More here: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/10/31/vc-istan-4-silicon-valleys-tea-party/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/10/31/vc-istan-4-si...
jerf 13y ago
A Guy Said Something That Freaked Me Out So The Wall Street Journal Would Like To Remind Silicon Valley On Behalf Of The Establishment That It Is Not The Establishment And It Should Stay Aware Of Its Place
DanielRibeiro 13y ago
The talk "Silicon Valley's Ultimate Exit" that the article mentions was (also?) given at Startup School a few weeks ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A
agrias 13y ago
Srinivasan is orchestrating a lot of great work with Bioinformatics. In the comments, it's very odd that people think the best and the brightest in SV are only building tools that help give ads more exposure. But then again I should probably stop reading WSJ comments, and that would also probably get me called arrogant.
projectileboy 13y ago
I think this is a fifth-level recycling of progressively more sensationalistic reporting about a talk that was, I thought, quite humble and thought-provoking. I expect this kind of journalistic garbage in the tech press and in lesser (read: most) mainstream news outlets; I definitely do not expect it from the WSJ. I know it was merely an opinion piece, but still very disappointing.
- deleted 13y ago
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  - kdsudac 13y ago
    Video of original talk from startup school: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A
- AsymetricCom 13y ago
  Can you explain to me the opinion here? I think it's very cut-and-dry telling like it is. SV needs customers and customers are in US, living US ways. Where is the opinion?
mehrdada 13y ago
Interestingly, I do not even think the main point of the talk is to actively seek independence for Silicon Valley, but rather, it's simply projecting a future that will happen, and in fact, is mostly a continuation of the trend that's been going on for a while. It's not a matter of if, but when and how. Technology is going to be more powerful than many laws and regulations, and "code" becomes the de facto law in many contexts. This insight suggests that you'll have leverage if you build things that will facilitate life in that future society that will inevitably happen. What I do not see in this talk directly is arrogance. That is not to say that people in Silicon Valley are not arrogant. This talk is not. Also, I personally think the WSJ article is pointless and whiny. Even if Silicon Valley comes out as arrogant to the outside world, it is quite justified. That's not hard to see. Just look at the appreciation rates of stocks by category in the past 5 years, for instance.
- AsymetricCom 13y ago
  I can think of something more powerful than code. All the hardware that enables code to do anything. Code lives in an ivory tower. It's pretty easy to build something productive in that kind of environment, but then thinking that your productivity in an ivory tower will be matched in the real world is just ignorant. To demonstrate this property, consider iTunes, probably one of the most key pieces of software today, responsible for distribution of many types of media across the globe while paying authors instantly, at a small cost of freedom for both parties. Now write that code on pamphlets and drop it from a plane over Africa. Pay close attention to what happens. If you look close enough you'll notice not a god damn thing happens that is not related to the physical medium being re-appropriated for productive uses. They won't reverse engineer the code, they won't abstract away the key business principles and build a new prosperous Africa, they won't learn how to program either. You see, Africa has no need for a digital distribution system with DRM. They don't even have a network capable of carrying it's data to 99% of the population. Even if you set one up and gave away iCrap to every African, you'd never recoup the astronomical costs selling copies of bits. The thing SV needs to realize is they are not the first coders and they are already surrounded by code, at the level of societies, religions and governments. These coders are much better because they've been dealing with inconsistent platforms for hundreds of years without the benefit of virtualization layers or government-enforced standard protocols. Sure, you can generate the same kind of code that runs governments and religions from a computer, but you're forgetting the fact that that computer exists inside the system of government. As soon as you remove the government, your hardware gets stolen by people with better hardware, your software gets stolen by people with better software, and your communications data gets mined by deep packet inspection, extracting value just like an invisible tax or inflation. That last one was a joke, you need government for that.
sneak 13y ago
The problem is that the WSJ's main premise about SV needing the rest of the US is wrong. The internet is decentralizing that control faster than SV's economy of locality can produce more. Look at Berlin, Kiev, Riga, and a dozen other places. SV's monopoly on world-changing does not have "USA" as a dependency. Indeed, soon if not already "not US-based" will be or already is a feature.
- nostromo 13y ago
  What's Riga's biggest tech company?
  - sneak 13y ago
    Honestly, I have no idea. I live in Berlin and Native Instruments, Ableton, and Soundcloud immediately come to mind. It's about the ability of smart people to start businesses in places with good quality of life and low costs, serving the whole planet. Pixelmator comes to mind too, but that's Vilnius and they're small, but absolutely game-changing. It's quality, not quantity.
    - enra 13y ago
      There are startups everywhere. As an European, I think it's a sad, but the truth that there isn't a single "leading tech company" in Europe, where just in as in SV area there are several. It's very different than having few startups working on their websites in a startup cafe. Soundcloud is cool but not exactly a technology platform. Successful in in it's own niche, but a dwarfs beside Youtube or iTunes volume. I don't think there isn't any reason why there can't be (like Nokia was at some point), but just now there isn't any left. (I said "leading" in quotes, because someone might comment that there are Siemens, SAP and whatever, but I really can't think of that many hardware/digital/services products that I would regularly use or to build on for work or for other purposes.)
- pratik661 13y ago
  Well Silicon Valley does need America's consumer market, legal infrastructure, security, and skilled work force. The author of the article is not wrong in that sense. How successful would your start up be if you had to waste time worrying about your clients breaching contracts (with no legal resource for you to recover the money owed to you)? Or waste time worrying about populist policies destroying your business model? Or figuring out ways to cope with extortionary behavior from local organized crime/and or government? These are all legitimate problems businesses in other parts of the world face (though not in places like Germany or UK). Even the markets developed countries like Germany are not as large as the US consumer market. Having close, easy access to the biggest consumer market in the world has its perks.
001sky 13y ago
SV needs biz models that dont rely on the the assets controlled by the largest lobbying groups in the US congress.
- pvdm 13y ago
  Military industrial complex, big pharma, carbon/energy complex, insurance, big finance. what else ?
  - deleted 13y ago
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agorabinary 13y ago
Effectively argues, to use an analogy, that China with its explosive market-based growth needs Western debtor nations to buy its stuff, and that acknowledging its superior economic sustainability is "arrogant". And the "paper belt" isn't the arrogant one? I view this author's attitude a lot like I view that of Fareek Zakaria, whose tripe we're all force-fed in high school: "We may be entering a post-paper-belt world, sure, but we can't be certain how this will all turn out so it's best to speak moderately and carry around a copy of the New York Times."
eriksank 13y ago
Balaji Srinivasan makes a lot of sense. The paper belt used to run the show. They are now losing that power and trying to claw it back with yet more paperwork. I am entirely favourable to the idea of curtailing, thwarting, and thoroughly undermining the regulatory bullies in the filthy paper belt. They have no legitimacy.
wavesounds 13y ago
The talk did not "dismiss non-techies as unimportant to the nation's future". BSS was talking about finding new places for trying new things if they aren't allowed in America. Or even within America finding new ways of trying new technologies without affecting the entire society all at once. This article is overly sensational and reactionary.
wavesounds 13y ago
Yeah "Silicon Valley has an Arrogance problem" not the Banks this rag is a mouthpiece for that created the worst economic collapse since the great depression and then held the American people hostage for Billions of dollars in tax payer bailouts.
Glyptodon 13y ago
Silicon Valley may have an arrogance problem, but Wall Street, DC, Hollywood, and the mainstream media have pretty much ruined the United States of America, so pardon me for being mostly unmoved when an ancient and beholden behemoth of the Murdochian trumpet parade decides to bellow it.
- joelmichael 13y ago
  Rupert Murdoch seems to love Silicon Valley. https://twitter.com/rupertmurdoch/status/389132604311474176 https://twitter.com/rupertmurdoch/status/389132604311474176
- ojbyrne 13y ago
  I think there is an arrogance problem, and it arises when MBAs from Ivy League schools, lawyers who worked their way through the byzantine federal government legal and lobbying system, Hollywood moguls who have mostly fueled their careers on deceptive accounting, and heads of large moribund media organizations, suddenly decide that they need to get in on this whole tech thing, almost invariably at the executive level, yet lack even basic knowledge of how computers, the internet, software, or for that matter, online marketing, work.
  - jstandard 13y ago
    You left engineers who think their command of technology makes them superior to all of these "recent" luddite invaders off the list. Your comment reflects the essence of what a large part of the article criticizes, an insular technologist culture that feels most of its ailments come from without. I agree that I've seen some of the folks you mention parading around, but have run into even more technology folks who think their hot new startup is far more important than anything else someone could be working on.
    - ojbyrne 13y ago
      Actually I agree with you somewhat, but in my experience a lot of what they're doing is trying to hype their thing, because that's the game they're playing. Underneath there's a huge amount of self-doubt. Whereas the people I'm talking about, underneath there's a huge amount of noblesse oblige.
Zigurd 13y ago
One thing that goes completely unsaid in the WSJ article is that people want real representation and self-determination, and the government, and maybe America itself, is too unwieldy to deliver on that. Small democracies can be restored. Big ones... maybe not.
keepkalm 13y ago
A peaceful exit, on our barge. Good day sir.
AndrewKemendo 13y ago
>The government funded the early technologies that led to the Internet, venture capitalists are financed by nontechies' retirement funds, and laws passed in Washington can determine the tech industry's legal future. Right, and the Spanish and British founded modern America, what is your point? There is quite a bit of precedent for taking the ball from the previous players and starting your own game to their exclusion.
crassus 13y ago
Here's the original talk for anyone that prefers original content to the "journalist telephone" game http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A
Sindrome 13y ago
If SV has a arrogance problem then does Wall Street/Hollywood have an arrogance epidemic?
babesh 13y ago
The question I have is what are the values that you want these experimental societies to live by. Tech for tech's sake is pointless. Sounds like Page and Thiel want to be the experimenters and someone else to be the guinea pigs. I doubt those two want to be in those societies other than as dictators. Too much to lose. We just need a new frontier like the moon or mars.
deleted 13y ago
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balajis 13y ago
Sheesh. Balaji here. Clearly this touched a nerve, so will be writing on this at some length. But this is the bit I don't get: But when I asked him what harms techies faced that might prompt such a drastic response, he couldn't offer much evidence. He pointed to a few headlines in the national press warning that robots might be taking over people's jobs. These, he said, were evidence of the rising resentment that technology will foster as it alters conditions across the country and why Silicon Valley needs to keep an escape hatch open. But I found Mr. Srinivasan's thesis to be naive. According to the industry's own hype, technologies like robotics, artificial intelligence, data mining and ubiquitous networking are poised to usher in profound changes in how we all work and live. I believe, as Mr. Srinivasan argues, that many of these changes will eventually improve human welfare. But in the short run, these technologies could cause enormous economic and social hardships for lots of people. And it is bizarre to expect, as Mr. Srinivasan and other techies seem to, that those who are affected wouldn't criticize or move to stop the industry pushing them. But that was actually exactly my point: as Farhad states, people may indeed "move to stop the industry", so we need to keep an escape hatch open. A huge chunk of the people here in the Valley are first or second generation emigrants who picked up stakes from their home countries and currently work from a laptop. They left their N home countries because those locales weren't favorable to technology. Is it impossible to think that backlash could make it necessary for us to leave an N+1st, as our ancestors (recent or distant) did? I can only speak for myself, but the motivating emotion here isn't arrogance. It's one part apprehension, knowing what happened to the Chinese in Malaysia, the Indians in Uganda, and the Jews in Europe. And it's one part hope, thinking that we can build something better with a clean slate, without 230 years of legacy infrastructure and cruft.
- deleted 13y ago
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runewell 13y ago
Yes, it's SV that is arrogant. Hopefully we can one day match the humbleness and deep community-oriented spirit known as Wall Street. What a joke.
Sentil 13y ago
Split California into North and South states, so that influence of Los Angeles Hollywood on valley will reduce.

71 points by jmacd 13y ago

Is there a single example of arrogance in this entire article? My guess is the headline write/editor was having a bad day. I don't think that was the intent of the writer.

jmacd 13y ago
It does feel a bit like the whole article is trying to justify the title. I think it should fall squarely under the Editorial byline...
- vbuterin 13y ago
  It's an ideological bible-thumping parade. Every ideology has people who do these from time to time; progressives, conservatives, authoritarians, libertarians, everyone. The point is not to convey information; the point is to say (1) this threat exists, and (2) transmit the author's feeling of moral indignation to people who are on the same "moral wavelength". If you're an authoritarian, seeing some post on reason.com rambling about the evils of coercion will just seem silly to you; that's the point, you're not the target.

brandonb 13y ago

There's an excellent Quora thread on this with 34 answers: http://www.quora.com/Silicon-Valley/Why-are-so-many-people-in-Silicon-Valley-arrogant http://www.quora.com/Silicon-Valley/Why-are-so-many-people-i... People cite everything from arrogance as a defense mechanism against failure, to the necessity of entrepreneurial delusion, to youth, to denying that people in SV are arrogant at all.

nextstep 13y ago
And I think we're starting to see all those same arguments made here in this comment thread.
- smtddr 13y ago
  I haven't even read the article, but I did just read this[1] and I agree very strongly that SV; particularly developers, are very difficult to approach. Everything & everyone is below them; not worth their time. If you lack any detail of some domain-knowledge of whatever treny new tech you're trying to ask about, you just get insulted(maybe accompanied by a vague hint at the answer). Basically, like this video[2]. 1. http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-confess-the-worst-things-about-working-at-google-2013-11?pundits_only=0&get_all_comments=1&no_reply_filter=1#comment-52768b7d69bedd692a53c738 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-confess-the-... 2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGkL6eQWOAI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGkL6eQWOAI 3. ...really? http://i.imgur.com/4aaH7GW.png http://i.imgur.com/4aaH7GW.png

michaelochurch 13y ago

Here's what really makes me angry. These jackasses who are going out and using technology's success to spout insane pro-rich politics, making asses of themselves in all sorts of creative ways (cf. Sean Parker's wedding, and that "jungle party" with the caged tiger) are a bunch of old-style corporate executives who, after invading technology, have given technologists a bad reputation in the country at large. Our image is being tainted by their arrogance. Look, it's not the nerdy engineers (the ones who love technology, who would be in it even if it weren't "hot") who are responsible for this crass, New Money horror-show. It's the carpetbaggers who failed into technology because banking, hedge funds, and consulting didn't want them. They don't really belong in the first place. They're an invasive species in tech, and they're the ones creating this arrogance problem. They capture the lion's share of the value, set themselves up as the elite (when tech is "hot") and make a whole set of unrelated people look bad. However, I agree. The Sand Hill Road elite is utterly unfit to manage a bag of rock salt, much less run the world. Those sad wankers built a society in the Bay Area where the software engineers building the place can't even buy a house-- and they want to call government ineffective? Crackah, please.

yoloswag 13y ago
Fuck Sand Hill Road, fuck TechCrunch, fuck YC, fuck every venture fund, accelerator, and all the hype. They are all distractions. All of them. If I start my own company I'm going to do it without all of that frivolous shit. I'm tired of disruption. I'm tired of "changing the world", "changing the way we X", and all the blithering idiots who made Snapchat a $4b company. Think about it. Dropbox, Facebook, Twitter and all of the other successful companies would have succeeded despite all of this shit. They were awesome ideas. They would have succeeded anyway. I refuse to participate. I'm tired of it. I can't be the only one who's disillusioned with all of this nonsense.
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  It's like what the Republican Party did when it had a severe image problem (thanks to Bush) and needed to invent the Tea Party: a 180-degree change in image, a "revolution" of style without substance. More here: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/10/31/vc-istan-4-silicon-valleys-tea-party/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/10/31/vc-istan-4-si...

jerf 13y ago

A Guy Said Something That Freaked Me Out So The Wall Street Journal Would Like To Remind Silicon Valley On Behalf Of The Establishment That It Is Not The Establishment And It Should Stay Aware Of Its Place

DanielRibeiro 13y ago

The talk "Silicon Valley's Ultimate Exit" that the article mentions was (also?) given at Startup School a few weeks ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A

agrias 13y ago

Srinivasan is orchestrating a lot of great work with Bioinformatics. In the comments, it's very odd that people think the best and the brightest in SV are only building tools that help give ads more exposure. But then again I should probably stop reading WSJ comments, and that would also probably get me called arrogant.

projectileboy 13y ago

I think this is a fifth-level recycling of progressively more sensationalistic reporting about a talk that was, I thought, quite humble and thought-provoking. I expect this kind of journalistic garbage in the tech press and in lesser (read: most) mainstream news outlets; I definitely do not expect it from the WSJ. I know it was merely an opinion piece, but still very disappointing.

deleted 13y ago
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- kdsudac 13y ago
  Video of original talk from startup school: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A
AsymetricCom 13y ago
Can you explain to me the opinion here? I think it's very cut-and-dry telling like it is. SV needs customers and customers are in US, living US ways. Where is the opinion?

mehrdada 13y ago

Interestingly, I do not even think the main point of the talk is to actively seek independence for Silicon Valley, but rather, it's simply projecting a future that will happen, and in fact, is mostly a continuation of the trend that's been going on for a while. It's not a matter of if, but when and how. Technology is going to be more powerful than many laws and regulations, and "code" becomes the de facto law in many contexts. This insight suggests that you'll have leverage if you build things that will facilitate life in that future society that will inevitably happen. What I do not see in this talk directly is arrogance. That is not to say that people in Silicon Valley are not arrogant. This talk is not. Also, I personally think the WSJ article is pointless and whiny. Even if Silicon Valley comes out as arrogant to the outside world, it is quite justified. That's not hard to see. Just look at the appreciation rates of stocks by category in the past 5 years, for instance.

AsymetricCom 13y ago
I can think of something more powerful than code. All the hardware that enables code to do anything. Code lives in an ivory tower. It's pretty easy to build something productive in that kind of environment, but then thinking that your productivity in an ivory tower will be matched in the real world is just ignorant. To demonstrate this property, consider iTunes, probably one of the most key pieces of software today, responsible for distribution of many types of media across the globe while paying authors instantly, at a small cost of freedom for both parties. Now write that code on pamphlets and drop it from a plane over Africa. Pay close attention to what happens. If you look close enough you'll notice not a god damn thing happens that is not related to the physical medium being re-appropriated for productive uses. They won't reverse engineer the code, they won't abstract away the key business principles and build a new prosperous Africa, they won't learn how to program either. You see, Africa has no need for a digital distribution system with DRM. They don't even have a network capable of carrying it's data to 99% of the population. Even if you set one up and gave away iCrap to every African, you'd never recoup the astronomical costs selling copies of bits. The thing SV needs to realize is they are not the first coders and they are already surrounded by code, at the level of societies, religions and governments. These coders are much better because they've been dealing with inconsistent platforms for hundreds of years without the benefit of virtualization layers or government-enforced standard protocols. Sure, you can generate the same kind of code that runs governments and religions from a computer, but you're forgetting the fact that that computer exists inside the system of government. As soon as you remove the government, your hardware gets stolen by people with better hardware, your software gets stolen by people with better software, and your communications data gets mined by deep packet inspection, extracting value just like an invisible tax or inflation. That last one was a joke, you need government for that.

sneak 13y ago

The problem is that the WSJ's main premise about SV needing the rest of the US is wrong. The internet is decentralizing that control faster than SV's economy of locality can produce more. Look at Berlin, Kiev, Riga, and a dozen other places. SV's monopoly on world-changing does not have "USA" as a dependency. Indeed, soon if not already "not US-based" will be or already is a feature.

nostromo 13y ago
What's Riga's biggest tech company?
- sneak 13y ago
  Honestly, I have no idea. I live in Berlin and Native Instruments, Ableton, and Soundcloud immediately come to mind. It's about the ability of smart people to start businesses in places with good quality of life and low costs, serving the whole planet. Pixelmator comes to mind too, but that's Vilnius and they're small, but absolutely game-changing. It's quality, not quantity.
  - enra 13y ago
    There are startups everywhere. As an European, I think it's a sad, but the truth that there isn't a single "leading tech company" in Europe, where just in as in SV area there are several. It's very different than having few startups working on their websites in a startup cafe. Soundcloud is cool but not exactly a technology platform. Successful in in it's own niche, but a dwarfs beside Youtube or iTunes volume. I don't think there isn't any reason why there can't be (like Nokia was at some point), but just now there isn't any left. (I said "leading" in quotes, because someone might comment that there are Siemens, SAP and whatever, but I really can't think of that many hardware/digital/services products that I would regularly use or to build on for work or for other purposes.)
pratik661 13y ago
Well Silicon Valley does need America's consumer market, legal infrastructure, security, and skilled work force. The author of the article is not wrong in that sense. How successful would your start up be if you had to waste time worrying about your clients breaching contracts (with no legal resource for you to recover the money owed to you)? Or waste time worrying about populist policies destroying your business model? Or figuring out ways to cope with extortionary behavior from local organized crime/and or government? These are all legitimate problems businesses in other parts of the world face (though not in places like Germany or UK). Even the markets developed countries like Germany are not as large as the US consumer market. Having close, easy access to the biggest consumer market in the world has its perks.

001sky 13y ago

SV needs biz models that dont rely on the the assets controlled by the largest lobbying groups in the US congress.

pvdm 13y ago
Military industrial complex, big pharma, carbon/energy complex, insurance, big finance. what else ?
- deleted 13y ago
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agorabinary 13y ago

Effectively argues, to use an analogy, that China with its explosive market-based growth needs Western debtor nations to buy its stuff, and that acknowledging its superior economic sustainability is "arrogant". And the "paper belt" isn't the arrogant one? I view this author's attitude a lot like I view that of Fareek Zakaria, whose tripe we're all force-fed in high school: "We may be entering a post-paper-belt world, sure, but we can't be certain how this will all turn out so it's best to speak moderately and carry around a copy of the New York Times."

eriksank 13y ago

Balaji Srinivasan makes a lot of sense. The paper belt used to run the show. They are now losing that power and trying to claw it back with yet more paperwork. I am entirely favourable to the idea of curtailing, thwarting, and thoroughly undermining the regulatory bullies in the filthy paper belt. They have no legitimacy.

wavesounds 13y ago

The talk did not "dismiss non-techies as unimportant to the nation's future". BSS was talking about finding new places for trying new things if they aren't allowed in America. Or even within America finding new ways of trying new technologies without affecting the entire society all at once. This article is overly sensational and reactionary.

wavesounds 13y ago

Yeah "Silicon Valley has an Arrogance problem" not the Banks this rag is a mouthpiece for that created the worst economic collapse since the great depression and then held the American people hostage for Billions of dollars in tax payer bailouts.

Glyptodon 13y ago

Silicon Valley may have an arrogance problem, but Wall Street, DC, Hollywood, and the mainstream media have pretty much ruined the United States of America, so pardon me for being mostly unmoved when an ancient and beholden behemoth of the Murdochian trumpet parade decides to bellow it.

joelmichael 13y ago
Rupert Murdoch seems to love Silicon Valley. https://twitter.com/rupertmurdoch/status/389132604311474176 https://twitter.com/rupertmurdoch/status/389132604311474176
ojbyrne 13y ago
I think there is an arrogance problem, and it arises when MBAs from Ivy League schools, lawyers who worked their way through the byzantine federal government legal and lobbying system, Hollywood moguls who have mostly fueled their careers on deceptive accounting, and heads of large moribund media organizations, suddenly decide that they need to get in on this whole tech thing, almost invariably at the executive level, yet lack even basic knowledge of how computers, the internet, software, or for that matter, online marketing, work.
- jstandard 13y ago
  You left engineers who think their command of technology makes them superior to all of these "recent" luddite invaders off the list. Your comment reflects the essence of what a large part of the article criticizes, an insular technologist culture that feels most of its ailments come from without. I agree that I've seen some of the folks you mention parading around, but have run into even more technology folks who think their hot new startup is far more important than anything else someone could be working on.
  - ojbyrne 13y ago
    Actually I agree with you somewhat, but in my experience a lot of what they're doing is trying to hype their thing, because that's the game they're playing. Underneath there's a huge amount of self-doubt. Whereas the people I'm talking about, underneath there's a huge amount of noblesse oblige.

Zigurd 13y ago

One thing that goes completely unsaid in the WSJ article is that people want real representation and self-determination, and the government, and maybe America itself, is too unwieldy to deliver on that. Small democracies can be restored. Big ones... maybe not.

keepkalm 13y ago

A peaceful exit, on our barge. Good day sir.

AndrewKemendo 13y ago

>The government funded the early technologies that led to the Internet, venture capitalists are financed by nontechies' retirement funds, and laws passed in Washington can determine the tech industry's legal future. Right, and the Spanish and British founded modern America, what is your point? There is quite a bit of precedent for taking the ball from the previous players and starting your own game to their exclusion.

crassus 13y ago

Here's the original talk for anyone that prefers original content to the "journalist telephone" game http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A

Sindrome 13y ago

If SV has a arrogance problem then does Wall Street/Hollywood have an arrogance epidemic?

babesh 13y ago

The question I have is what are the values that you want these experimental societies to live by. Tech for tech's sake is pointless. Sounds like Page and Thiel want to be the experimenters and someone else to be the guinea pigs. I doubt those two want to be in those societies other than as dictators. Too much to lose. We just need a new frontier like the moon or mars.

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balajis 13y ago

Sheesh. Balaji here. Clearly this touched a nerve, so will be writing on this at some length. But this is the bit I don't get: But when I asked him what harms techies faced that might prompt such a drastic response, he couldn't offer much evidence. He pointed to a few headlines in the national press warning that robots might be taking over people's jobs. These, he said, were evidence of the rising resentment that technology will foster as it alters conditions across the country and why Silicon Valley needs to keep an escape hatch open. But I found Mr. Srinivasan's thesis to be naive. According to the industry's own hype, technologies like robotics, artificial intelligence, data mining and ubiquitous networking are poised to usher in profound changes in how we all work and live. I believe, as Mr. Srinivasan argues, that many of these changes will eventually improve human welfare. But in the short run, these technologies could cause enormous economic and social hardships for lots of people. And it is bizarre to expect, as Mr. Srinivasan and other techies seem to, that those who are affected wouldn't criticize or move to stop the industry pushing them. But that was actually exactly my point: as Farhad states, people may indeed "move to stop the industry", so we need to keep an escape hatch open. A huge chunk of the people here in the Valley are first or second generation emigrants who picked up stakes from their home countries and currently work from a laptop. They left their N home countries because those locales weren't favorable to technology. Is it impossible to think that backlash could make it necessary for us to leave an N+1st, as our ancestors (recent or distant) did? I can only speak for myself, but the motivating emotion here isn't arrogance. It's one part apprehension, knowing what happened to the Chinese in Malaysia, the Indians in Uganda, and the Jews in Europe. And it's one part hope, thinking that we can build something better with a clean slate, without 230 years of legacy infrastructure and cruft.

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runewell 13y ago

Yes, it's SV that is arrogant. Hopefully we can one day match the humbleness and deep community-oriented spirit known as Wall Street. What a joke.

Sentil 13y ago

Split California into North and South states, so that influence of Los Angeles Hollywood on valley will reduce.