Is Silicon Valley Morally Bankrupt and Toxic? 469
concealment sends this quote from a post about how the goals of many tech companies are at odds with what's good for consumers:
"Since I've been out of the Silicon-Valley-centered tech industry, I've become increasingly convinced that it's morally bankrupt and essentially toxic to our society. Companies like Google and Facebook — in common with most public companies — have interests that are frequently in conflict with the well-being of — I was going to say their customers or their users, but I'll say 'people' in general, since it's wider than that. People who use their systems directly, people who don't — we're all affected by it, and although some of the outcomes are positive a disturbingly high number of them are negative: the erosion of privacy, of consumer rights, of the public domain and fair use, of meaningful connections between people and a sense of true community, of beauty and care taken in craftsmanship, of our very physical well-being. No amount of employee benefits or underfunded Google.org projects can counteract that. Over time, I've come to consider that this situation is irremediable, given our current capitalist system and all its inequalities. To fix it, we're going to need to work on social justice and rethinking how we live and work and relate to each other. Geek toys like self-driving cars and augmented reality sunglasses won't fix it. Social networks designed to identify you to corporations so they can sell you more stuff won't fix it. Better ad targeting or content matching algorithms definitely won't fix it."
For the umpteenth time... (Score:4, Insightful)
Betteridge's law of headlines
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states:
"Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no". ...
"The reason why journalists use that style of headline is that they know the story is probably bollocks, and don’t actually have the sources and facts to back it up, but still want to run it."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines [wikipedia.org]
As for the article's content:
A great discovery!
The author has finally also found out that their customers are the advertising firms, their 'users' are the product they sell.
Film at 11.
The rest is some pseudo-socialist rant.
Move along, nothing to see here.
Re:For the umpteenth time... (Score:5, Insightful)
er... positing a question on a discussion forum is a generally acceptable way of starting a discussion on said forum
Re:For the umpteenth time... (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdot is a discussion forum?
Huh. Interesting.
Re: (Score:3)
1. You are not a journalist
2. Your post was not a news article
Therefore,
>Slashdot is a discussion forum?
this is not a headline
Re:For the umpteenth time... (Score:4, Funny)
Slashdot is a discussion forum?
I view it more as a comet, a dense head of quoted original article at the top and then thousands of gibberish comments streaming out behind it as the tail.
Is Betteridge's law of headlines correct? (Score:5, Funny)
I think my subject line says it all. We need to make a headline out of that.
Re:For the umpteenth time... (Score:4, Insightful)
Is Silicon Valley at all non-toxic and do they have any morals left?
Fixed it for you.
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Have you ever been to Silicon Valley? I live here and can tell you that the answer is "no". SV is not like Detroit with 3 companies that make up the economy, it's pretty much everything you can think of dealing with technology. Why do you rate such a massive amount of technological knowledge on 2 companies in the valley? For instance, Rambus is here as well as every other company designing computer memory. All of the companies designing switching equipment are here also. That's right, Ericsson (former
Re:For the umpteenth time... (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you ever been to Silicon Valley? I live here and can tell you that the answer is "no". SV is not like Detroit with 3 companies that make up the economy, it's pretty much everything you can think of dealing with technology. Why do you rate such a massive amount of technological knowledge on 2 companies in the valley? For instance, Rambus is here as well as every other company designing computer memory. All of the companies designing switching equipment are here also. That's right, Ericsson (formerly Redback and Entrisphere also), Brocade, Cisco, AT&T are all here designing and building the switching equipment for your phones, PCs, servers, and more. Apple is here, as is Dell, HP, Oracle, IBM, and countless others that design and build everything from PDAs to massive servers. Yes, all designed and developed in SV as well as most of the software you use to run on them.
Okay, piss and moan about Google's lack of morals. Why not also pay attention to the products and services they provide for "FREE" to cynical douche bags like the author of TFA? Don't like Google for their morals, simple answer is don't use their products and tell others the same. That's how the free market works you know, we have the power as consumers to either keep companies in business or put them under in time.
And look, I'm as cynical as the rest (maybe more) when it comes to Government. You can check my post history if you have doubts. But companies are not the same (at least currently in the US) as the Government. People still have power in the market, but you have to be smart enough to use the power you have.
So the answer again is "No", you obviously have no idea what Silicon Valley is or does to make such an ignorant argument. Come visit sometime, surprisingly most of the people you meet here are very courteous and helpful. I will warn you to keep the arrogant attitudes at home though, pricks are frowned upon here and it's a very big place.. easy to get lost if you get my meaning.
Like my parents and three of my grandparents, I was born in "Silicon Valley." My family has had a front-row seat to the transformation of the South Bay from orchards to technology companies and I have watched the Silicon Valley culture completely takeover and displace the existing culture. If you happen to be in a profession that benefits from Silicon Valley, then good for you, you get to stick around and watch Silicon Valley subsume everything that was great about the Bay Area; that unique mix of red neck farmers, libertarian outdoorsmen, and hippies. Of course if, like my family, you happen to be blue collar and your sleepy little town lies within commuting distance of Cupertino or downtown SF then you get to watch rich assholes from out of state move in and buy every house in sight for ten times what its worth. They wait like vultures until someone who probably built their house when they came back from WWII drops dead and, when the children can't afford the taxes on the inflated real estate, they generously step in to buy the house, which they promptly tear down or remodel into a walled fortress. Your close-knit neighborhood, surrounded by oak trees and poppies where you used to wander with impunity..? Yah, that's now an up-scale area with high fences and manicured yards; everything else is an over-grown mess because everyone is too important to pitch in and trim back the brush on weekends.
I remember when stores were still closed on Sundays in San Jose because they were all small, locally-owned businesses. There was a small, local grocery store near my grandparents' old house--which they were forced to sell when they retired because of the skyrocketing cost of living and property values--that I used to buy candy at after school. I visited a couple of years ago and was happy to see that it was still standing. I was, however, enraged to find that it had become a "specialty market," selling gluten free bullshit and $10 loaves of "artisan bread" to the owners of the expensive German car
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Prop 13 was passed because of growing problems with the distorted housing markets in the Bay Area and Southern California in the 70's, which was when a lot of the storied tech companies in the Bay were building like crazy, driving up the value of all the orchards and dairy farms. If you have ever visited IBM in Almaden, which now sits on a nature preserve, that is what a lot of the Bay was starting to look like in the 70's; high-tech facilities sitting in the middle of a field. By the 90's, Prop 13 was prac
Re: (Score:3)
Don't be so quick to dismiss it. I don't know about "morally bankrupt", but if you've ever smelled the air around northern San Jose or Milpitas, you'd readily believe it was toxic.
Re:For the umpteenth time... (Score:5, Funny)
Ooh, I got one!
Can any headline which ends in a question mark be answered by the word "no"?
Re: (Score:3)
Betteridges law states that the answer is no. To avoid the paradox forming I recommend putting your fingers in your ears and sing "la la la".
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The rest is some pseudo-socialist rant. Move along, nothing to see here.
I think that's a hand wave on your part. You're just slapping a label on the author's assertions and then jettisoning them without analyzing it and providing a reasoned response. The author is simply stating that every candle lights the darkness around it -- but it still casts a shadow. The question here is not whether Google (or any company, organization, or group) has done wrong, but whether the good outweighs the bad. And has it?
Is the ability to search the internet using a proprietary algorithm and dat
Re:For the umpteenth time... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Um, that's quite a block of text. I'm sure you make some valid arguments in there somewhere, but can I briefly bring attention to the words your fingers typed here:
Is the ability to search the internet using a proprietary algorithm and database almost instantly worth the steady erosion of our privacy and corresponding loss of civil liberty? Our founding fathers made the vote anonymous for a reason -- and in that day and age, the right to peacefully assemble was also the right to anonymously assemble.
I beg you to explain by what mechanism Google providing Internet search capabilities or any service for that matter -- services, I might add, that you may freely choose to use or not -- your right to privacy, anonymous voting, civil liberties and freedom of assembly have been eroded?
Has Google unbeknownst to me, taken away free will?
Re:For the umpteenth time... (Score:4, Insightful)
Social justice is a code word for Marxism. 'Nuff said.
Another hand wave. I never used the "code word". I also didn't use the secret handshake or the special hand signal. What I did ask for was that people consider the consequences of their decisions, politically and personally. In other words, I asked for personal responsibility. People like you remind me that there is a growing subset of americans that think any call for responsibility is socialism, communism, marxism, etc. They believe that consequences can be reduced to dollar signs. Something is good and responsible if it makes a profit, and bad and irresponsible if it results in a debt.
I don't know what you want to call that ideology, but it is morally debased and corrupt to its very core: There is more to life than money.
Re:For the umpteenth time... (Score:4, Insightful)
What's so wrong with socialism? Why is it always an insult?
It's not like we ever had communism yet either. Every attempt at communism was just an elaborate tribute to Orwell's Animal Farm. It's not like capitalism is the clear winner, in terms of both economic and moral success.
Both are deeply flawed implementations of their ideologies where corruption and greed have perverted the movement towards the original positive ideas of freedom and equality (equality in the sense of human worth and opportunity, not material distribution).
It's so obvious to me that some aspects of society need to be to treated like critical infrastructure and all attempts must be made to remove corruption from it. Step one, is removing profit.
I've lived long enough to realize that we don't even have capitalism. That's a farce. Any attempts and pleas to even move towards fairness, sanity, social justice, or basically towards the center of capitalism is perceived as far left socialism. Which again, as an insult makes no sense.
Hmmm, what's that political term about windows? Oh yeah, Overton.
Re: (Score:3)
>It's not like we ever had communism yet either. Every attempt at communism was just an elaborate tribute to Orwell's Animal Farm. It's not like capitalism is the clear winner, in terms of both economic and moral success.
This is a pretty standard communism apology. No matter how many times communism has been implemented in a state, tyranny results. But apologists always say, "Well, it just wasn't done right."
This is utter bullshit, and here's why. A communist economy is by definition managed by the state
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Marx doesn't get to magically define communism as rainbow farts and unicorns. The fundamental characteristic of communism is common ownership of the means of production. All the other consequents that I listed above fall out from this fact.
You or Marx or whoever can pretend that in your magical rainbow world that this leads to a stateless society, but I've already said above how it instead leads to a tyrannical dictatorship every time.
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If you were being sarcastic, I apologize, but I'm going to respond to you as if you are honestly the left-wing nutjob you appear to be.
>Any nation with a social security system, is socialist. It don't matter if it is a good system or a bad one. You got it, your a pinko. The US got it, so they are all pinko's.
No. Socialism is government control of industry.
Being forced to buy insurance (which is all Social Security is... and Obamacare, for that matter) is not socialism. It's not a bunch of other things ei
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Re:For the umpteenth time... (Score:5, Interesting)
When independent leaders ask the people to treat their fellow members of the human race better, they are advocating for social justice.
When an enormously powerful government takes things from one class to earn the political support of another class, that is NOT social justice.
Re:For the umpteenth time... (Score:5, Insightful)
With that out of the way, why do people neglect the power they have as consumers in the market?
I have only one question for you: Do you feel powerful?
If the Silicon Valley is toxic ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... well ...
Please stop using the PC / Tablets / Smartphones - for many of the hardware were designed in Silicon Valley
Please stop using many of the software that you are using - including technologies that enable you to surf the Net
Without the Silicon Valley - and many of its offspring around the world - the author of TFA can whine all he wants, on a column on his local newspaper - if the editor of his local newspaper grant him a column, that is
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
... well ...
Please stop using the PC / Tablets / Smartphones - for many of the hardware were designed in Silicon Valley
Please stop using many of the software that you are using - including technologies that enable you to surf the Net
Without the Silicon Valley - and many of its offspring around the world - the author of TFA can whine all he wants, on a column on his local newspaper - if the editor of his local newspaper grant him a column, that is
There are many more valid ways to alter alter history and society than the tired old, "Don't buy it, don't use it" line. That type of strategy gives greater voice to those who have more money and power already. In other words it generally leaves the power firmly in the hands of those who already have power, are perfectly happy with the status quo, and thus have no urge to see the existing problems fixed.
Re:For the umpteenth time... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why? He's an AC & an apathetic/cynical dimwit. Soulskill does well to remind us of our lost humanity & the soullessness our western society is headed towards, if not already there. Quoting bullshit wikipedia 'laws' at us also doesn't change the facts or change anything in actual fact.
In any case, SV is just a reflection & extension of our society as a whole, just another symptom of what may be the beginning of the end, if we're not past the point of no return already..??? (who says every discussion post can't end with a ? ? :)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, yeah, Rome is burning, along with the rest of the world. We've been hearing that every day since our revolution.
Meanwhile your quality of life continues to go up, technology continues to improve, fewer people are starving, more people have access to increasingly effective medication, more of us are better educated than ever before... hell, even our wars are becoming less bloody.
Shit is far from perfect from any perspective, and it never will be, but we keep trudging forward.
If other people want what you want (Score:5, Insightful)
then it will happen. Companies that survive do so by providing something that people want and something that people will pay for (sometimes the two are split, like Facebook).
If other people don't want what you want, accept it, and don't blame Silicon Valley.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:If other people want what you want (Score:5, Insightful)
He isn't wrong though.
People are not looking at the bigger picture when they make their purchasing decisions for several reasons:
1) They don't understand what cyberspace *is* yet, how their actions, and others actions, can have real tangible effects on their "real" lives.
2) They have a poor understanding of privacy, anonymity, it's true value to all parties, and Game Theory.
3) Apathy. I'm too small to make any meaningful difference anyways, so I will just continue to act against my best interests in the long term for short term gains in transient happiness and feelings of security.
4) I'm too poor to shop at someplace else other than Walmart. I have to save my pennies, regardless of the fact that continuing to give money to businesses that outsource jobs, has real and tragic effects on all people back at home, which ultimately affects how many pennies I get paid in the first place.
5) It really is a pretty shiny....
6) Huh? Watevs. I don't like peeps that use like big words and shit always thinking there better or something. I got swag, yolo muthafucka
The death of America, and Freedom, will be because of apathy and complacency. I've a hard time really blaming them either, since there is an awful lot to be cynical about. Only until this generation actually has to suffer, really suffer, for Freedom will they finally understand, revolt against our oppressors (peacefully I hope) and then allow future generations to make all the same mistakes all over again.
Is it broke? (Score:4, Insightful)
Holy rant...
Here's another idea, it's not broke.
Re:Is it broke? (Score:5, Interesting)
How do you figure?
Go watch TV. Then come back. We'll talk then........
Back? OK, notice how TV ransoms you shit? Like the news & weather, the plot twist, etc? Much of the web does not do this. Paywalls are going up some places, and other places (like this one) let you pay to be free of the damn ads. Let's say you pay for TV from cable or sat dish provider. They inject local ads into the stream to target you, so even if you pay for the service you have to pay additional to get the few "premium" channels that don't have commercials. Imagine if your ISP were inserting ads into the sites you visit. Some tried, I believe, it was a huge stink and they stopped... settling for DNS redirects (use a different DNS).
TV is only about AV media and only secondarily about information and interactive stuff, but the web isn't, nor are the companies presented. However, I think they do a better job than the old media has. I can barely stand to watch TV at all the commercials are so intrusive in comparison.
Re:Is it broke? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sorry but the story's author made superb points about the fact that corporations (specifically Google) do what's good for them, and if its good for society great, if not, tough. Her specific and very personal example of the need for protecting some people's identity from a gamut of real threats including employers, future employers, bigots, religious fanatics, and a government that is perfectly happy to march up your posterior to ascertain what it was you had for dinner last night, should be a critical concern to every card carrying geek breathing today. You can't possibly sit there with that smug "Capitalism will fix everything" look on your face and tell me that the global corporation as it currently exists and the IP laws, and Banking laws, and near gutting of our system of government that said corporations have inflicted on society are a positive things. Every system that deals with primates needs to inspire the best in, and account for the worst in, said primates. Pure Socialism and pure Capitalism are equally bankrupt in the fact that they first assume people are saintly won't make fertilizer out of one another to get what they want (and history is sadly chock full of examples to the contrary.)
I believe that Capitalism is a healthy part of future workable system, there will always be a need for people to interact and gain mutual value from those very interactions. The question is how do you balance that needs of the one with the needs of the many. With 7 billion of us maybe 11 billion by the end of the century, you are going to have to make some very pointed tradeoffs between personal rights and civil liberties and social responsibility and personal integrity. All of that not withstanding the exploding technology threatens all aspects of traditional commerce and the integrity of the social fabric. What happens when we have nanotechnology, and the only things of value are IP, energy and raw atomic feed stocks? There will be no labor, save artistic self expression or side economies. No production per se (yes machines will work but not people.) How do you run your Capitalism in such a place? How do you prevent the machines recycle all the people for their carbon?
We need to invent a future that is conducive to being human, and the time for such invention is running out ever more quickly. We need to ask hard questions about how we preserve the best in what it means to be human in the face of what it will mean to become trans-human. As the interesting stuff happens more and more outside of the meat in our heads, how do we address the deepest aspects of who and what we are and how will we protect that from being ground up in the sausage machine of an automated economy which ultimately transcends that ability of human beings to manage or even impact in any meaningful way.
Your arrogance at not bothering to get what this woman is saying, and the vital importance of trying to see past your own prejudices with regards to evolving human social dynamics is at least disturbing. You represent the problem solvers and here you are being part of the problem. Those guys running the corporations. They're just like you and me, only they are playing the corporation game, and what kind of social engineering is called for to reward those players for improving the human condition and not subjugating it. People are mostly cattle told what they will want, eat and think by talking head in little boxes. I do not thrill to riding with a race of Pavlovian knucklehead as they meet their fates head on.
Dude. It's your fault (Score:5, Insightful)
You were the one who wanted all this great content for free (as in beer). By "you", I mean the opinions expressed here on Slashdot, especially when the topic comes to copyrights and file sharing laws. Google and Facebook are doing things "the right way", by that reckoning, but yes there is the darker side of which you speak.
How is Google supposed to pay 30,000 engineers, 1M rack-mounted x86 systems, and still hit their quarterly earnings and revenue targets? And the same for Facebook.
Only Amazon has a traditional business model, but even they are leaders in mining content about their users as well as their traditional IP inventory.
Re: (Score:3)
I think the heart of it stems from the fact that even non-users are affected by this kind of thing - at least unless they go massively out of their way to avoid it. Look at the opposition and non-adoption of the DNT header, to actively* express that you do not want to be tracked by these companies. They just don't care about the human side of things if there's money to be made.
But at the same time, it's like the banking crisis. In theory, a single business going under should only hurt its direct customers.
Short answer no, (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Short answer no, (Score:5, Funny)
Well, I agree with the author. Tech is a malignant leech on society, unlike wholesome industries such as finance or insurance.
Re:Short answer no, (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, I agree with the author. Tech is a malignant leech on society, unlike wholesome industries such as finance or insurance.
You forgot the law industry. But in all honestly, sci-fi has shown us everything from tech utopias like Star Trek to tech dystopias like 1984 with omnipresent telescreens with hidden cameras and microphones - though I'm sure there's even "techier" dystopias. Don't get me wrong, technology is great progress but it's also great progress for those who want to surveillance and control other people. And the big difference from the past is that computers and robots are obedient to a fault, they'll never rebel, never refuse to carry out an order, never lead an insurrection no matter what rights they violate or atrocities they're commanded to commit. Here in Norway 2/3rds of the population no longer make any adjustment to their tax returns - the government already knows everything and will hand you a pre-filled tax statement that you check.
Income tax? The company you work for report your income, unless you're self-employed. Own property? Bank accounts? Stocks? Car? Boat? Bought or sold any of those? All domestic registries report in and all linked to the same person id, you just need to report foreign holdings/transactions. Oh yes and marriage status and children, so you get your tax breaks. About 94% of all payments now happen electronically, somewhere between 50% and 60% of the population is on Facebook that we know stores everything indefinitely, there's electronic toll roads that read car signs and for regular travel most now have electronic tickets linked of course to your ATM card or your cell phone - that are all registered to a person, so even if you left your cell phone that everybody carries at home you're likely tracked somehow.
Now I don't see any particular reason to want to overthrow the government, but I sure think it's going to get harder and harder to organize anything big without the government's knowledge - at least a government that doesn't care one bit about personal privacy like authoritarian regimes generally don't. I'm pretty sure the TV is just a TV though and not a two-way telescreen, but in pretty much every other way imaginable the government knows far more about me than they did as little as 20 years ago. And a lot of the things they don't log today, is only because the logging switch is set to off. If the watchdogs are silenced, it's as easy as flipping a switch and more data comes streaming in than ever before in history.
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Most Silicon Valley companies aren't public, and are instead money making tools for the venture capitalists. Which is, if anything, worse.
What this author is taking issue with is not this fact _per se_ but the unthinking embrace of anything new, revolutionary and 'disruptive' that comes out of Silicon Valley without any consideration of more humdrum, everyday concerns like law and order, privacy etc...
As someone who lives in the NYC tri-state... (Score:4, Insightful)
Let me tell you, if you want to see toxic check out Wall St. and it's satellites in NJ and CT. At least Silicon Valley creates cool shit that make people productive and/or entertained. Wall Street produces nothing, it just sucks value out of the economy and puts it in overseas tax shelters. it sounds to me like you're burned out from living in the center of a capitalist vortex. Take some time off and go live in Massachusetts or Oregon or something and decompress. I would kill to work at a place like Apple. I don't care if it means 90 hour weeks, you got something more important to do than develop the next generation of computing technology?
Re:As someone who lives in the NYC tri-state... (Score:5, Insightful)
maybe Silicon Valley is no longer Silicon Valley (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:maybe Silicon Valley is no longer Silicon Valle (Score:3)
Looking back to what it was 25 years ago, much of what it was no longer exists. There's lots of vacant buildings, don't know why they are building more.
Spot on. All the semiconductor manufacturing has gone to Asia, mainly Taiwan. Our CEO was always over there on business trips and is always coming back with stories about office parks the size of the city of Fremont being built left right and center over there. Still a fair bit of design work happening here though. Apple is probably the archetypal modern company. Most value is added at the design, sales and marketing ends of the process, and that all takes place in the valley. The dirty work of manufact
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there are parts of san jose that are nearly ghost towns. acre after acre of FOR LEASE office / manufacturing buildings. but you are right, they keep building new stuff. i guess because no company wants to move into a depressing 1970's office.
Nothing is broken except how you see things (Score:4, Insightful)
Gee, I'd love to see a world where Intel, Dell, IBM, HP, TI and a host of other companies never existed. Yea, we'd be better off without GE, Ford, General Motors, Exxon and the like. Would not need any hackers in Silicon Valley, much less silicon. Just forget the transistor, integrated circuits or microprocessors ever existed.
Capitalism may have it's flaws, but it is better than any previously tried system over the last 6,000 years of recorded history. Please let's not repeat any of them!
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Gee, I'd love to see a world where Intel, Dell, IBM, HP, TI and a host of other companies never existed. Yea, we'd be better off without GE, Ford, General Motors, Exxon and the like. Would not need any hackers in Silicon Valley, much less silicon. Just forget the transistor, integrated circuits or microprocessors ever existed.
Capitalism may have it's flaws, but it is better than any previously tried system over the last 6,000 years of recorded history. Please let's not repeat any of them!
I'm with you all the way, except for your inclusion of Exxon. Some companies happen to bump shoulders with society by accident from time to time, but Exxon really is a nasty piece of work and I'm not just talking about the Exxon Valdez disgrace. Much of the global warming denial industry can be traced back to this one company.
Re:Nothing is broken except how you see things (Score:5, Insightful)
If you read the article, it's not about that at all. It's about _new_ Silicon Valley: the startup culture. This is massively different to the culture that existed when Intel, Dell, IBM, HP and TI were founded.
Those companies are all fairly traditional companies in organization and goals. They were typical old-school American corporate structures built to achieve modern results. HP wasn't crowdfunded, hyped into a bubble and then pushed into an IPO to make the founders and a couple of venture capitalists into multi-millionaires. It was a long-term endeavour built around providing serious engineering for serious ends. It wasn't a get-rich-quick scheme.
This article is more about the culture of quick-hit startups in Silicon Valley these days, which are built more around buzz, hype and marketing vapidity than they are around serious engineering or any kind of long-term planning. It's questioning the culture of founding a company around a cute idea with the aim of selling out in two years to become a millionaire. That is not what Hewlett and Packard were about. They built a company around engineering on the basis of a belief that they could provide a benefit over the long term.
If anything I'd say the weakness of the article lies in its evidence, which isn't really sufficient. It has one useful and accurate case study - Uber - but it really needs more than that to talk about any kind of trend. I rather think, though, that if the author had tried, he could have come up with lots of other examples. Uber was a great case study, though. It's 'innovative' and 'disruptive'...where you read 'disruptive' to mean 'doesn't see the point in complying with regulations meant to ensure public safety'. There's a _reason_ taxi services are strongly licensed and regulated virtually the world over (and you probably wouldn't feel great taking a cab in a place where they aren't).
Re:Nothing is broken except how you see things (Score:5, Informative)
This is not because this system has allowed great things that it is exempt from any criticism or that alternatives can not exist. Half of the achievements of the 20th century was publicly funded, let's not forget about that. Corporation are not the only way to make things happen.
Look at Bletchley park, look at the NASA. Look at the Bell Labs, which are an hybrid entity of public obligations and private funds and which invented Unix, C, and radioastronomy amongst other things.
Great things can be done through capitalism, free entrepreneuship and competitions, but let's not assume that this is the only way.
By the way, let's review the invention that you attribute to corporations :
So be careful with the examples you choose and realize that the computer revolution started as a governmental effort to crack German code, continued in the US as a Navy project, was given its best tools by the Bell Labs, an entity whose structure would make most business angels cringe and that software development is now driven in big part by a bunch of OSS idealists that often work on it for free.
Internet itself started as a university and military project. It was heavily funded by the government (Hello, M.Gore) before corporations could understand the interest of this thing. Afterwards, they tried very hard to break and control it, unsuccessfully. (Look at AOL, look at what MSN was supposed to be at first)
I don't deny that capitalism or even corporatism can drive innovation, but if you want examples, computer science is not the best place to get them. The feeling I get is that groundbreaking innovations are usually publicly funded while incremental innovations are made by corporations.
Social Responsiblity (Score:4, Insightful)
The era of socialism as it defined in the dictionary is dead in America. The idea of noblesse oblige, and societal responsibility are not only forgotten in minds of those who control the wealth in this country, but spit upon as if it were a curse. Too many Americans today feel that wealth redistribution by the state should be abolished, as they are quick to scapegoat the needy in light of this country's ills. It is this undercurrent of disregard for our fellow countrymen that is showing all over the place in the attitudes of the Haves, in today's politics and even something so basic as getting a job.
America needs to wake the hell up and realise that helping each other, taking responsibility for one's actions, and working for the common good are the cornerstones of civilization. Throw them out, and all you will have is barbarity and all that implies.
Re: (Score:3)
Everyone seems to focus on the worker, but more of us are consumers than workers, and well-run companies are good for consumers. They're also good for investors, and the majority of Americans are investors now, to some degree, with 401K and pension plans.
The majority of workers are not investors. The majority of workers are the people who consumers do not really think about when they are consuming. Everyone working in retail, or the service industry, a good portion of the population, does not have a 401K
Re:Social Responsiblity (Score:5, Insightful)
Nyet. What I'm objecting to is the GGP up there saying that government-run wealth redistribution isn't done at the point of a gun. It's just fairy-tale nonsense.
It's only fairy-tale nonsense if you fail to realise that wealth-maintenance is also done at the point of a gun. It is only possible to be wealthy because society enforces your property rights at the point of a gun. If you want to be reductionist, every social interaction is at the point of a gun because if you stray too far from accepted behaviour then either society collectively or an individual will shoot you. That's a pointless and irrelevant argument and it's just as pointless in this situation.
Now? (Score:3)
Ehh, you're just now figuring that out?
I thought it was self evident... (Score:3)
I thought that Silicon-Valley being "morally bankrupt and essentially toxic to our society" was self evident. But, why single out Silicon-Valley?
Typically society stays on course (Score:4, Insightful)
Awwh, cannot get your ship out (Score:2)
Feeling down?
No help around?
Burma Shave
Since when is Slashdot a political site? (Score:3)
Not that I seriously disagree with TFS, but... Since when is this tech news or stuff that matters?
News at four! Business is focused on its own interest rather than on the public's good in corporate America! Read all about it on Slashdot!
Seriously... This is the kind of stuff I'd expect to be reading on some political site, not on slashdot. I barely cope with the US political news and the US elections. (How about EU, Asia or Latin America political news for a change?) Wtf?
Re: (Score:2)
It's a meta question. If you were a banker on Wall Street, would you find it off topic if someone in 2005 had posted a thread questioning the moral value of products that packaged tiny slices of tens of thousands of subprime, no-documentation loans as derivatives with a triple-A credit ratings?
Probably not, if I were a banker with the slightest clue in finance. You do realize that banks were going full throttle towards bankruptcy back then for any observer who bothered to look, and that they're now all zombies, right?
And again, I don't question the premises in TFS, it's just that this belongs on some other site imho. I'd rather be reading about IBM's latest breakthrough on carbon nanotubes, thank you very much.
I am not completely convinced (Score:5, Interesting)
I once had the fortune to work for a very large international corporation that was entirely family owned, with no external stock holders. And I can tell you that the culture and mentality within that corporation was completely different compared to other workplaces I have been in.
They were much more concerned with continuously building the value of the brand / family name, than to make profit for the share holders. If they were convinced something was the right thing to do, they would allow it to take time and money.
So I would say the problem lays more in the way that companies are financed today, and the effects that has on their operations, than whether they are located in Silicon Valley or not.
No (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Come on, mate. You can do better than unoriginal meme regurgitation.
Besides, the question was posed by slashdot editors. The article headline is noticeably bereft of any questions.
Stopping road deaths is a "geek toy"? (Score:5, Interesting)
Since when are self-driving cars a "geek toy"? Road safety is a huge thing. Unless you hate old people, the disabled, and people who are just unlucky, getting humans away from the steering wheel is going to be up there with curing cancer.
Re:Stopping road deaths is a "geek toy"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone wise said this on slashdot earlier to the topic - Society can cope with serial killers, but parallel ones are a different cup of coffee entirely. Imagine the result of a software flaw or a malicious intervention where twenty cars do the same fucking stupid thing on an interstate highway. Sure, people fuck up all the time, but at least there, the probabilities of them doing so are fairly independant, and they can adapt to a messup better than software.
Newsflash (Score:3)
Companies try to make money! How evil!
Companies are meant to make money, that's how they pay their employees. As long as they're not using the law/government to take advantage (i.e. Apple) then there's nothing wrong with it.
Money is not evil. It's usually the most greedy who complain about the wealth of others.
Personalization can be good, evil, or both. (Score:3)
>Better ad targeting or content matching algorithms definitely won't fix it
Maybe not, but you have to admit that if you're going to be force-fed ads, ads for computer hardware & home automation gear are several orders of magnitude less annoying than ads for feminine hygiene products, diapers, payday loans, personal injury lawyers, and [Romney|Obama].
People are shits (Score:2)
Yup, there are lots of morally bankrupt and toxic corporations. Limiting your critique to the high tech industry could cause you to think this is about technology vs human interactions or some made up arbitrary distinction. Clear your mind, feel the force, and examine your feelings: this issue is much broader than you suppose.
People can be morally bankrupt and toxic. They can be greedy little shits. Usually they're either taught by society, or reigned in by societies laws, to be more ethical and bubbly and
In a word, YES! (Score:4, Interesting)
I moved there in 1997 to work for the Lighthouse Design division of Sun Microsystems (formerly the division did NeXT software). As a mid-size city kid from the Canadian prairies, I was immediately struck by, not just the moral bankruptcy, but what I felt was literally a soul-destroying culture. I left soon after and only returned a couple times, each time having that impression confirmed.
Here are some of the things I observed. Some are general to the United States and its form of capitalism, some (seem to be) specific to the Bay Area and Silicon Valley:
1. Culture of guns and violence. Simply a belief that enough other people are "bad" that you must protect yourself and it would be okay to kill someone else to do that. There are lots of places in the world where that belief is not pervasive and they seem to be nicer places to live. It's kinda like the justice system is supposed to work: it's fairer if you presume innocence and that actually encourages people to behave nicely whereas if you presume guilt, people will live up to that expectation.
2. Extreme Culture of Materialism. Money matters, and getting rich matters even more. The expression "F***-You Money" is a good indicator of this. I knew a few people who had their "F***-You Money" and they weren't enlightened... they were spoiled. It's like the "American Dream" taken to an unhealthy extreme. People were generally extremely busy and most friendly conversation was either about money, money other people make, technology, sex or drugs. Very little friendly conversation was about community, relationships, or the soul.
3. A Bizarre Hypocrisy around Tolerance/Inclusion. San Francisco, in particular, was bad for this; blind to its own racism yet so proud that it was inclusive and tolerant. If you know the area, I only need say "East Palo Alto" (it's been a few years so maybe it's gentrified now) and you should be able to figure out what I mean. We tolerate all religions, all philosophies, all genders, all types of cultures... except the black and spanish folks in our midst who only work menial or retail service jobs. The real problem is that most people there were completely blind to what was blindingly obvious to me as an outsider.
4. Pervasive, Persuasive Moral Bankruptcy. The longer I was there, the more I "got into" the culture. I've seen this happen to other friends from outside the area. It kills people's souls. Maybe not everyone... I'm sure there are some people who are shining examples of enlightenment... but I couldn't resist it, and I don't know anyone else who has (save one person). Of course, this is "normal" - we adjust to and eventually adopt the culture of our surroundings unless we actively work against it. I _was_ actively working against it and it still changed me to my own detriment.
I believe that the organizations that are there (Google, Facebook, etc.) are not "to blame" as they are just participating in the culture and trying to be successful in that culture. (Or to be more accurate, the people in those organizations are doing this.) But anyone who has an idealistic bone in them will quickly have it gellified and unconsciously begin to give up that idealism for the much more flexible moral relativism and then eventually the outlook that, heck, capitalism isn't so bad after all! not realizing that the ideology in that area is beyond capitalism: it's imperial corporatist capitalism that cares only for growth, and at any human cost (just so long as it doesn't harm the bottom line).
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
So what you're saying is that America is populated with people?
Re: (Score:2)
So what you're saying is nothing in his comment meant enough to reflect on, so you flicked it away with an "it's human nature" bromide? That's lazy, man. What he said bugged you. But maybe you just want to brush it off and move on. Ok.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
My vacuous twaddle is just my own opinion. I may be wrong. I may have observed the wrong sample of reality to come up with my opinions. Sorry.
That said, my use of the word "soul" shouldn't be construed as some mystical mumbo-jumbo. I mean simply our seemingly unique human capacity to use reason to discover the nature of the universe... which capacity we frequently ignore as we become emotional about issues and circumstances. I'm not sure if you've read the book "The Black Swan" but it has a few great s
Re: (Score:3)
I can't speak to the rest of your points, but I found your first one incomprehensible:
Simply a belief that enough other people are "bad" that you must protect yourself and it would be okay to kill someone else to do that.
Were you to be attacked on the street one day, would you not protect yourself? Do you think poorly of those who have? Do you not believe in a right to life, let alone liberty and property? Or do you just not believe in "bad" people?
Not a Luddite screed (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder if there could ever be a sane market again where you paid what a phone costs and got secure communication without being tracked, or paid for email with built in PGP and avoided getting spammed and having your email property of and stored by your provider forever, paid for a social networking service without having your life exposed or your face secretly scanned and sold to the government. I think those times are gone.
'Social Justice' is a ridiculous concept (Score:5, Interesting)
It's an airy concept devoid of any real meaning. It's has the flimsiest of justifications for its existence and every time I hear it I want to hit someone. It's a high-minded sounding renaming of whatever particular pet grievance the current user of the term has in mind at the moment. It's an attempt to avoid any real debate over the merits of the grievance by presenting a piece of the picture and appealing to someone's sense of fairness. It's dishonest, deceitful and doesn't belong in polite conversation. It's the race-baiting of the left.
Otherwise, I completely agree with you. Silicon Valley is toxic and morally bankrupt. Just as bad in its way as Wall Street.
The problem, as I see it, is the profit motive. Which is not exactly a problem precisely. It's when the profit becomes the goal instead of the reward.
When you structure a business, you have to structure it so it makes financial sense, so it can support itself, so it can make money. Structuring it to extract the maximum possible value out of the system is counter-productive. With the right kinds of locks and business tricks you can keep anybody else from getting into your value stream at all. Microsoft is the king of this. Unfortunately this behavior is long-term toxic to the business ecosystem. And it's long-term toxic to the fabric of society.
No, you should have a goal in your business that has nothing to do with money. The goal you have is the value you provide. Then think about how to get enough money out of the system to achieve that goal grow modestly and make you and your employees reasonably well-off. Your profit is your reward for doing something people value. It's not the goal.
Of course, there are puzzles like Facebook. Facebook has never been profitable. They're greedy because they have no idea how to extract value. So any means is considered fair game because they're hungry. Which is a different (but related) kind of attitude problem.
To me, the evil of Facebook is one of centralization. Whenever you have that kind of centralization you will get something that uses its control to the detriment of everybody else. It might not happen right away (aka Google), but it will inevitably happen. Centralization is a bug, never a feature.
Re:'Social Justice' is a ridiculous concept (Score:4, Insightful)
Money that people pay for your service or product is exactly what you worth for society.
I disagree. Money has coercive properties. They are not as obvious as brute physical force, but they are there all the same. For example, people need to buy food to live. Convince them that somehow they aren't trapped and trap them in a cycle where they have to give you all their money just to get enough food to survive, and nearly everybody will perform whatever work you require in exchange for it. They will give you any amount of money if you have all the food.
There are numerous other ways in which money can coerce people into doing things that aren't generally productive or helpful. I think it's very easy for very money focused economies to fall into local maxima from which they cannot escape because the people who have the most money are able to use the coercive power of money to erect barriers that prevent the system from leaving the local maxima.
What you are repeating is standard libertarian dogma. And while I'm very sympathetic to the libertarian position, I think this is one blindspot in libertarian philosophy.
Corporations are profit motivated (Score:4, Interesting)
Period.
- Don't ever think a corporation does anything directly to benefit their customers.
- Don't ever think a corporation does anything directly to benefit their internal employees.
- Don't ever think a corporation does anything directly to benefit the "public"
For corporations, everything is done in the name of profit. If it happens to benefit other parties, that's a side effect, not the intention. In most cases, it has to benefit other parties to make a profit, but by no means is original intention. The original intention is profit.
AC states this as a fairly generalized statement. There are exceptions - corporations who fall outside this stereotype, private companies who are not necessarily interested in a profit, non-profits, etc. However, for most cases, don't delude yourself into thinking there was ever any true intention other than profit.
Evil Organic Farmers (Score:2)
All you need to know (Score:2)
Earlier Silicon Valley tweeted:
Duh, WINNING
Check your premises (Score:4, Insightful)
If you think we live in a capitalist society, think again.
Recent /. Poll (Score:2)
Social media topped the list when /.ers were asked What tech would you un-invent? [slashdot.org]
I guess all the people complaining about the article forgot to vote in that particular poll.
Cheers,
Dave
In a word - yes (Score:3)
It's not a ding on SV, it's a report from the trenches in Sunnyvale and Mountain View. . This is how it is. No one trusts anyone and no one is trustworthy either. There is zero comroderie that doesn't blow over with the first sign of shifting political winds. IT's one of the most disgusting atmospheres imaginable.
A few things I learned working here : corporations are like Darwinistic experiments in evolving and promoting sociopaths.
I will never hire anyone who has been in a position of management with a corporation for years.
I have no interest in incubators, VC or any of the other trappings of SV which are supposedly dedicated to helping entrepreneurs. Thanks. See ya.
I will think long and hard about hiring anyone who has been an engineer in a large corporation for a prolonged period of time. Long and hard. Sorry.
For having this much money, SV is basically a long series of yesteryear strip malls with very very very expensive houses most of which were built in the 50s and go for , oh, about 5-8 times their value elsewhere in the country, which is to say their actual worth.
As opposed to all the other industries? (Score:3)
Products and services are not forces of moral good. Moral good is a force for moral good. And as long as we're bashing capitalism, all those communist countries didn't for one second consider the well being of their captive populations. Did you know for example that there is not a single communist/socialist country which ever permitted trade unions?
So? (Score:3)
The number of MBAs in the valley has probably reached critical mass.
This is fixable. Here's how. (Score:3)
I can kind of live with the self-interest part. But the short-term orientation is killing us.
One solution to that is to put back some of the old features which forced businesses to think longer-term. Longer lock-in periods for stock options. (That used to be 2 years; now it's 6 months or less) Taxing short-term capital gains at much higher rates than long-term gains. (Warren Buffet keeps mentioning this.) Bringing back Glass-Stegall, so commercial banks and investment companies are separate industries and trouble on the investment side can't take down the depository institutions. Bring back some of the old bank regulations which kept banks more local and tied to their own loans, so they don't make bad ones.
More radically, tax dividends, interest paid, stock buybacks, and executive compensation at the same corporate tax rate. There's a bias in favor of debt in current tax law, and this fuels the "private equity" industry. Level that out, and companies will pay dividends rather than boost their stock.
Make pension funds no longer "qualified investors", so they can't invest in hedge funds. Regulate hedge funds like other mutual funds. Don't allow traders to deduct short-term capital losses from capital gains, which would end high-speed trading.
Give stockholders control over executive compensation. Not advisory votes, but each stockholder puts down the total compensation of the top 5 employees on the proxy, and the share-weighted median is used. Make voting rights pass through as far as the tax break does, so mutual funds and pension funds pass that decision through to their shareholders.
Now that's financial conservatism and solid American values, circa the Eisenhower administration.
My reply to Soulskill (Score:3)
See here:
http://viableawesomism.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/viable.html [blogspot.com.au]
Silicon valley solves problems. It may not solve the ones you want, but it solves many of them, and with cutthroat efficiency.
Why? because it allows people to take risks with new ideas. I'd transport you 100 years back, or maybe 700 years, and let you try acting out new ideas back then.
Some of them may be world-changing [betterplace.com]. Others may be fart apps.
But the important thing is that there are many, and there can be many, because the risk is not all worn by government or the taxpayer or some planning comittee of old farts who care more about their seat than about what they can use their power to fix. In Silicone Valley risk is worn by the people who consciously choose to take it.
I find this "war" between people who want to fix the world and people who want to make money one of the dumbest ideas ever concocted.
If you don't like east-coast MBA's being taught that money is the single important product of any business - good on you. neither do I. Money is a byproduct, albeit an important one. The real product of any organisation we build should be the awesome it creates, whatever that may be. If you agree - prove that old-school profit-over-everything MBA culture wrong. Go and DO something awesome.
And why can't you do something awesome for the world AND make a killing?
Money is important. If awesome organisations don't make money, if they don't have a built-in economic engine, it's like giving birth to a child without a heart, who will need to spend the rest of his life carrying around a life-support machine. I'd rather that life-support machine comes built in.
Our societal life support machinery (charity, government funding) is limited and finicky. You want to build organisations that will die the second someone closes a tap? go ahead. I'd rather see us create things with the resilience of Google.
You think Facebook and Google aren't awesome?
Suggest you take your head out of your ass, because you can't perceive the change these technologies made to places elsewhere in the world, outside your nice comfy American bubble. Compare Hama, Syria - 30 years ago and today [nytimes.com]. Compare India, China or Brazil back then and now. What do you think technology has done to these people? Given a lot of them more hope and dignity and prosperity than they every had in history.
Recognize you are not alone in the world - there are 7 billion of us now. And things that were possible when there were 10 times less people may no longer be possible when there's this many vying for the same amount of resources. If your idea is going back - it's a bad one. If your idea is going somewhere new - stop bagging the existing system and start being very specific about how you want to make it better.
Last, I sense a big disillusionment with "money". Money is not merely a vacation or a new plasma. It's not just a gold star. Money is power to change. Succeeding in Silicon Valley (and anywhere else in the world as an entrepreneur) is about convincing people of ideas and obtaining the resources to make what you can imagine happen. Money gives power to do that. You're not going to change anything by whinging or waxing ethical theories. You need to get off your bum, figure out a vision to do /something/ better, figure out how to connect a "power source" to that vision in the form of an economic engine so your idea isn't a public liability, and go build this organisation that does awesome.
As a society we have a list of problems as long as the eyes can see. Quit wasting people's time by ranting. Society as it hangs together today is stacks better than anything else we ever tried. If there's things you don't like about it - start fixing them, or get the fuck out of the way of those that are doing just that.
Yes, that's a dare.
Silicon Valey has moved past technology (Score:3)
While in the past many companies there were actually headed by engineers who understood what they did, those companies are more and more headed by MBAs. They don't understand technology that's why they come up with business models like "renting e-Books". That's also why there is next to no progress in the mobile sector for example. And that's the reason why we still have to deal with horribly bad and insecure computer systems.
Then again fewer and fewer people with technical skills want to work in the US, so the remaining companies will eventually have to move out in order to get workers.
Welcome to the Real World (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the way it is with everything, the way it has always been and sadly, the way it will always be until we're genetically altered as a species to have an unquestioned hive mentality. It only seems unusual when one gets initially involved with a sense of excitement about their own dreams and plans, eventually realizing they were wrong for imagining it to be otherwise. Humanity operates politically as a political animal and has never been a meritocracy -- although it tries to be on occasion. The real challenge is to find a way to constantly improve something and allow everyone involved in the problem to buy into the decision making process. Anything else will only result in variations of the original complaint skewed with a different perspective.
So what will you actually do? It has to actually be something.
Speeches that allow you to feel proud about your comments are more about the pride and little about the (conveniently vague) idea. The idealistic rant is a classic condition of human nature. It's been done by everyone at one time or another and not unique to any time, place or culture. Stating the obvious while thinking others were unaware of the obvious and thinking they have become impressed with your enlightened insight is one aspect of what the Greeks meant by being sophomoric. After stating the obvious, you then "walk away" and leave it for someone else to resolve while feeling like a genius for somehow equating the stating of a problem with the offering of a solution.
Personally, my beliefs presently lack the cynicism anyone may wrongly infer from this post and embrace a positive outcome for societies in the long run, maybe even close to what was explained in the summary. But that will occur only if there isn't suppression of communication or a suppression of disparate groups of people with differing opinions independently trying to work with each other to improve their condition, including a process that prevents one of those groups from becoming a monopoly; or a way to prevent a bunch of royal asshats wandering around with nothing to do except to question people's motives -- every time they pursue something they happily enjoy doing or find interesting -- explaining this is not in the best interest of society.
The utopian scenarios I'm told I should pine for instead of pursuing personal happiness, never seem to really explain themselves well enough to prevent it from deteriorating into some one-size-fits-all master plan empowering a committee of well meaning self appointed leaders to decide what's best for everyone to do. Also, they tend to pay lip service to people's feedback (in the best case scenario -- usually, they disappear) and becoming an inhumane version of the original complaint in TFS. If you want to prevent it from happening, well ... then (cough) ... you should do something about it.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
you dont have to be republican to vote for your corporate overlords
Documentary on Ayn Rand & Silicon Valley (Score:3)
http://vimeo.com/38724174
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
...but it helps!
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
It would help if we actually had a left wing. Currently, we've got a center-right and far-right wing. I'm admittedly on the far-left, making me a bit out of step with the rest of the country, but it's deeply frustrating to any socialist when people call Barack Obama, a center-right politician, a Marxist or socialist.
Obama is very friendly to Wall Street. Very, very friendly.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Funny)
Center wing and far right wing? Well that just doesn't fly around here....
Barak Omarxist was seen in drag on Wall St. being picked up by Eddie Murphy,....very friendly on Wall street.
Always a story behind the story,behind the story......
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't believe a one dimensional political continuum is adequate to describe the diverse spectrum of political beliefs out there. I'm libertarian-leaning, which some would characterize as "far right", but that's a half truth at best.
I would consider both parties to be generally left leaning to the extent that they are both obsessed with the use of government power as the basis for society. All the Republican talk about limited and non intrusive government is just rhetoric and Democrats openly advocate bigger government.
Where does individual liberty vs. authoritarianism fit in the left/right dichotomy? If libertarians are "far right" then the Republican ideology of big government, erosion of civil liberties and perpetual war has to be center-left or far left.
What do you call Obama's advocacy for massive government intervention in the healthcare system if not "socialist"?
I think what we're seeing is a government in Washington DC where neither party represents the people to any great extent. You're "far left" and think the government is center-right, giving you no representation. I'm "far right"(or whatever) and think the government is center left, giving me no representation. Basically the federal government doesn't represent us. That's why we should all agree to dismantle large parts of the federal bureaucracy and transfer revenue and power back to the states and local communities.
The need for a basic income (Score:2)
The Richest Man in the World: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p14bAe6AzhA [youtube.com]
A parable about robotics, abundance, technological change, unemployment, happiness, and a basic income.
The knol mentioned in the video has been moved here because Google Knol is shutting down: http://www.pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html [pdfernhout.net]
That parable and video was directly inspired by this:
"Structural Unemployment: The Economists Just Don't Get It"
http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2010/08/04/structural-unemployment-the-eco [wordpress.com]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This crap is so ridiculous. Article in short...
Company I worked at got bought by Google. They kept me on. Then Google wouldn't let me switch to a technical position since I wasn't a technical person. Jerks.
Google+ doesn't want me to use a handle. I'm a queer/transgender female so that's offensive.
I went back to school for something kinda technical and found out I hated it, so I quit school again. Still angry that Google didn't hire me for a technical position without any technical credentials.
After I quit,
Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Informative)
Skud's an experienced programmer. As is the case with many experienced computer programmers, she didn't have a computer science degree. Please see any of the countless debates on Slashdot on whether computer science degrees are necessary for programming. She wasn't switching to a technical position: she was getting forced out of a technical position she had held for three years. She wasn't switching to a handle; her name is Skud, that is the name she normally uses, and that is what Google's official policy supposedly defines as the name to use for a Google account.
Much of the article is a critique of Silicon Valley culture in general, and why she's glad she left.
Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Insightful)
Google+ doesn't want me to use a handle. I'm a queer/transgender female so that's offensive.
You obviously read enough of The Fucking Article to have seen this part:
As a queer/genderqueer woman, victim of abuse, and someone who was (at that very time) experiencing online harassment and bullying, I was very vocal within Google for the need for Google+ to support pseudonymity.
Her words speak for themselves.
You haven't done anyone a service by summarizing.
Re: (Score:3)
Seriously... a company that consistently ranks among the top of every "Best Companies to work for" list keeps trying to recruit you, and you're complaining??? While tons people struggle to find work and would love to even get past the first round at Google?
It's like passing by people dying in the desert, complaining about how that awful water you're drinking should taste better.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
The article's not much better than the summary. Key points:
Re: (Score:3)