A Magical Time to Start a Movement

http://dennybritz.com/blog/2013/10/23/a-magical-time-to-start-a-movement/

by dennybritz • 13 years ago

30 33 13 years ago

zwieback• 13 years ago

"The government ... disrupted by a group of people building something on their laptops in Silicon Valley."

Right below this quote from your blog, in the "From around the web" section: "Obamacare could soon cause massive layoffs."

I think it's a magical time to get people wasting time on their phones, maybe solve some minor efficiency problems around the edges of Obamacare but SV is the worst possible choice to solve the big problems we're facing.

dennybritz• 13 years ago

Fair opinion. I believe there are many startups and companies that solve big and important problems, particularly in the Healthcare space. It's not only "around the edges", and lots of healthcare accelerators encourage such startups.

Layoffs are not necessarily a bad thing. Building a world with technology in mind means that the role of humans will shift away from traditional positions to something different. In the long run, this may create more jobs that it makes go away.

Though I can't disagree with you on the mobile phone thing ;)

smacktoward2• 13 years ago

Building a world with technology in mind means that the role of humans will shift away from traditional positions to something different. In the long run, this may create more jobs that it makes go away.

Unfortunately, as John Maynard Keynes famously observed, "in the long run we are all dead." (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes)

thetylerhayes2• 13 years ago

I haven't read OP's piece yet, but I agree with @dennybritz that there are plenty of us here in SV who care about solving the big problems.

For example we just launched Prime, an iPhone app that allows you to download your medical record from any doctor and share health activity with friends and family. http://stayinyourprime.com. We're not the only ones in healthcare. There's also Practice Fusion, drchrono, DoctorBase, and countless others.

And on the education side there's Inkling, for example. And on the banking side there's Simple (though they're actually based in Portland). And of course YC famously backed Watsi. Maybe you have different examples in mind of what big problems are but it does seem to me that as we are seeing more startups overall that means we're seeing more startups addressing bigger/more meaningful problems.

felipe• 13 years ago

an iPhone app that allows you to download your medical record from any doctor and share health activity with friends and family

I mean no offense to you personally, but I fail to understand how this problem fits in a world in which 2.5 billion people lack basic sanitation.

oscargrouch2• 13 years ago

The bigger problems arent being solved because the people (or animals, plants) dont have money to pay back..

SV is solving problems for who can pay.. and that crowd already has too many people with their brains working all day to solve their problems..

The problems that are let unsolved, are the ones from marginalized people.. people smashed and invisible to the society.. the ones called the "loosers"..

Even if not targeting social issues.. the big problems and really cool innovations come from passionate human beings.. and not form short-circuit ideas; or money-traps companies.. this is just noise..

The passionate ideas may find a way to be profitable latter.. but it hardly start that way..

I agree with people that say that its hard to believe that really "disruptive" stuff will come from SV now.. because the culture that created the good things for start its constantly getting killed by the people who lend the money for the projects..

it need a long-term thinking, it needs to take a real risk.. the sort of thing banks and angels dont like to invest.. these are traditionally things that the state has invested in.. and the capital folks only get to the party later, when theres no risk..

So unless SV try to get back to its roots, and achieve that.. it wont be that magical place anymore..

jeremyx2• 13 years ago

...keep telling yourself that.

gboudrias• 13 years ago

Flagged because condescension is not an argument nor is it constructive.

jeremyx2• 13 years ago

Fair enough. Yes there is massive disruption and potential for more, but it's a fallacy to think that power lies in the hands of individuals.

The myth that "...a single person can build something on his or her laptop, instantly reach billions of people, and create a movement if he can convince others to believe in the idea." just helps concentrate power into the entities with the most processing power. Who's networks are needed to reach all those people?

Jaron Lanier puts it a bit more eloquently than I do: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/opinion/sunday/fixing-the-...

herbig2• 13 years ago

It's a magical time to have been born in a western country, but then that's been true for a while now.

By "every individual wields great power" you probably mean those with access to technology, relative peace, and education. War hasn't gone away we just don't fight them at home anymore.

hackula12• 13 years ago

Quality of life is up just about everywhere else as well over the last several decades.

wildgift• 13 years ago

The tech side is great. The wages side... not so great.

Also, it's not a "sharing economy" when people are selling things.

eterm• 13 years ago

This is magical thinking. The reality is that established players will use their positions to buy out, advertise out and just generally squeeze out any threats to their business.

hackula12• 13 years ago

Bell and IBM show that this does not always work. MS may be the next example in ~10 years.

jacknews• 13 years ago

Yeah, We'll learn how governments magically turned the 90s internet dream of anarchistic freedom into Big Brother. And how network analysis, in real time, can instantly identify the core members of any "movement", and if "inappropriate" quickly stomp on them.

pessimizer2• 13 years ago

Hotels and taxi companies fear the sharing economy, Airbnb, Uber and Lyft.

I thought the sharing economy was bittorrent and Free Software. Aren't AirBnB, Uber, and Lyft part of the home piecework subcontractor temp-for-life economy?

mcculley• 13 years ago

With MOOCs we no longer need universities to educate people.

I am not convinced of this. I think MOOCs are great and certainly a game changer for domains like computer science. But there's lots of domains that I know nothing about that I am not convinced I could master via an online course (e.g., biotech or anything else that requires expensive equipment).

Even where MOOCs are the best answer, isn't the best provider of a MOOC going to be a university? Maybe just what we think of as a university will change.

herbig2• 13 years ago

Not only can you not master some things from a course online, but a college education is as much if not more about status and a paper degree as it is about the education you receive.

epsylon• 13 years ago

A MOOC is a scalable replacement for a traditional class lecture. It's not intended to replace labs or hands-on experience, nor the value of being immersed into a campus, mixing with students and teachers...

That being said, MOOCs can help alleviate a lot of the cost of a University degree.

voyou• 13 years ago

Nice try, but I think this is a little bit too obvious to really work as a parody of Silicon Valley vacuousness.

gopher12• 13 years ago

Government more or less created Silicon Valley (government subsidies, guaranteed government contracts, direct government investment), yet it is now "powerless"? If anything, Silicon Valley is a great example of the power of government.

Silicon Valley has yet to solve any of the big problems in the world; poverty, healthcare, climate change.

The idea that there's no war going on the world, or that you don't need universities is complete nonsense.

For sure some things are changing, but that's always been the case. This blog post, and the bizarre idea that everything must be "disrupted" (nobody knows exactly what that means) is a perfect example of the insular, ignorant, and shallow attitudes that pervade Silicon Valley.

VladRussian23• 13 years ago

The idea that there's no war going on the world, or that you don't need universities is complete nonsense.

...

the insular, ignorant, and shallow attitudes that pervade Silicon Valley

these ideas and attitudes pervade only very young or very rich heads. It is also natural that such heads are the most vocal ones, especially when they are both - very young and very rich - at the same time.

oscargrouch2• 13 years ago

We build things, convince people to use them, and fight the status quo

How the status quo would fight the status quo?

Paraphrasing what a wise man once said:

How can a kingdom divided against itself survive?

The people behind all these cool new projects are the same people from the old industries, if thats not the reality in the beginning that soon will change as long its a profitable business.. the status quo may not be in the seed phase, or even in the initial funding, but definetly will be a part of it on the IPO.. and thats how even the cool projects end to serve the status quo..

The only way to really fight the status quo, the establishment is decentralizing profits and power.. otherwise, its always the same story, since the beginning of the civilization

A Magical Time to Start a Movement

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