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By conflating the "state of computing" with the "state of the Valley," the author just spreads Valley-centrism. To the decline or marginalization of hacker cul

By conflating the "state of computing" with the "state of the Valley," the author just spreads Valley-centrism. To the decline or marginalization of hacker culture within tech: Computers and tablets today are proprietary and very complex, unfortunately. Also, there's lots of money to be made in tech now -- but of course there is! (Good old high-paying jobs I mean, not freshly-funded founders trying to rip you off.) An essay on this topic might examine how we can keep hacking alive, or change the world as hackers rather than as entrepreneurs. What aren't we doing with today's hardware that we could be? Also, there are thriving hacker and maker communities if that's your thing.

btilly 12y ago
By conflating the "state of computing" with the "state of the Valley," the author just spreads Valley-centrism. This comment needs to be supported. Particularly since the author lives in Europe.
jacquesm 12y ago
I don't even remember when I last visited the valley, it must have been 2001 or so. Consider this post written with as the backdrop Bucharest, Romania, Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Berlin, Germany. Feel free to leave the valley entirely out of it.
- dgreensp 12y ago
  I should have called it start-up culture, but I usually call it Valley culture. Two guys with a slide deck and an idea who call themselves the CEO and the CTO and are looking for a series A raise? Silicon Valley invented that and exported it. It's spread far and wide now, but it's still a small and self-absorbed world compared to all the other stuff going on in tech. A lot of the innovation on hardware, browsers, and programming languages is coming from big companies, academia, and open source projects. And there's still a lot of hacking. It's just a matter of what crowd you hang out in mostly. I guess I don't see a direct connection between hardware hacking back in the day and wannabe entrepreneurs. I knew a lot of hardware hackers at MIT, and it's just a different crowd from the web start-up crowd. And engineers at Google, Mozilla, or Apple, say, are inventing the future while knowing very little about start-ups.

btilly 12y ago

By conflating the "state of computing" with the "state of the Valley," the author just spreads Valley-centrism. This comment needs to be supported. Particularly since the author lives in Europe.

jacquesm 12y ago

I don't even remember when I last visited the valley, it must have been 2001 or so. Consider this post written with as the backdrop Bucharest, Romania, Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Berlin, Germany. Feel free to leave the valley entirely out of it.

dgreensp 12y ago
I should have called it start-up culture, but I usually call it Valley culture. Two guys with a slide deck and an idea who call themselves the CEO and the CTO and are looking for a series A raise? Silicon Valley invented that and exported it. It's spread far and wide now, but it's still a small and self-absorbed world compared to all the other stuff going on in tech. A lot of the innovation on hardware, browsers, and programming languages is coming from big companies, academia, and open source projects. And there's still a lot of hacking. It's just a matter of what crowd you hang out in mostly. I guess I don't see a direct connection between hardware hacking back in the day and wannabe entrepreneurs. I knew a lot of hardware hackers at MIT, and it's just a different crowd from the web start-up crowd. And engineers at Google, Mozilla, or Apple, say, are inventing the future while knowing very little about start-ups.