In conversation with Marc Andreessen

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/10/marc-andreessen-in-conversation.html

by npalli • 12 years ago

138 67 12 years ago

Wow, I liked Marc already, but after reading this, I love him. This should be required reading for everyone.

Edit: I really admire the graceful way he handles the hard questions about libertarian philosophy - social welfare and job loss. Even though I don't agree with him, and feel he may be pulling some punches to keep his message broadly palatable, it's still impressive.

wffurr2• 12 years ago

By "graceful" you mean dodged the question and the interview let him get away with it?

Calling the very real hardship caused by job loss in America the "lump-of-labor" fallacy and calling our welfare state "very advanced" is not very graceful. Some exposure to what that's really like would be highly instructive for Marc. Spoiler: it's demeaning and depressing.

jasonisalive3• 12 years ago

He's a libertarian. A real libertarian argument would be something like this: "People should not expect to receive unconditional support in the event of losing their job or suffering financial hardship. People should factor such risks into their financial planning. Any unconditional support structures will weaken the incentives to prudent financial planning and lead to massive and society-wide problems of systemic dependency and economic maladjustment."

Unfortunately the logic behind this argument is poorly understood and widely resisted. People who advance such arguments are typically perceived as arrogant, callous, and entitled. So I think Marc is indeed dodging the bullet by trying to softly suggest alternative ways to perceiving these issues, as well as trying to encourage a change in perspective to notoriously-oblivious Americans on how their polity actually stacks up in global terms.

vonklaus• 12 years ago

There’s this myth that government regulation is well intentioned and benign, and implemented properly. That’s the myth. And then when people actually run into this in the real world, they’re, “Oh, fuck, I didn’t realize.”

To his point, you really do get the sense that, on balance, people are becoming more libertarian, and a lot of that has been catalyzed by technology disrupting entrenched business models that have benefitted from regulatory protectionism.

freshflowers• 12 years ago

Funny, because from a European perspective I get the sense that SV libertarianism (accompanied by a complete lack of ethics) is leading to a backlash where people are demanding stronger consumer-, labor- and privacy- protection.

I would say the reaction in the real world tends to be "Oh, fuck, those regulations are good for something after all."

wakeless• 12 years ago

You are right in a sense. I think people are demanding more flexible, realistic and more consumer favourable laws. Rather than the rigid structures that are in currently in place.

rvn10452• 12 years ago

Really? Maybe in the Valley they are becoming more libertarian. I think people are becoming less libertarian on main street.

AndrewKemendo• 12 years ago

We think access is broadening out the network so that everybody who could contribute can get access to the network. And that’s the one that we’re working on.

I would like to hear a lot more about this. Being on the east coast the Silicon Valley crowd or even just the ethos around it seem totally foreign.

I will say I am somewhat connected in the D.C. area and I have heard from many Angels and VC's that the east coast will never look like SV simply because the money that is here is not like SV money - it's too tied up, needs too much due diligence and investors are too tightly wound as advisers/board members.

I don't know if that is true, and we are seeing huge growth in the Startup scene here, but it certainly feels much more restrictive than what you see on HN and read about how SV money/networks get thrown around.

saddino• 12 years ago

As someone who relocated from DC to SV two years ago, DC has always had a healthy startup scene that is, as you suspect, hampered severely by money flow. That's not to say it's not possible to fundraise where you are, it's just amazingly much harder to do so.

waterlesscloud• 12 years ago

"I mean, part of it is, I love arguing.

No, really?

The big thing about Twitter for me is it’s just more people to argue with."

You know, that does pretty much sum of the appeal of Twitter for me too.

innguest• 12 years ago

I love arguing and I honestly did not know Twitter was fertile grounds for that. So I appreciate your comment. Now excuse me while I create my first twitter account.

vuldin• 12 years ago

TIL Mark Zuckerberg didn't know what Netscape was before meeting Marc Andreessen. Zuckerberg may get some slack from the reporter and even Andressen regarding this, but it's a shame that a person can start off knowing so little about the industry they end up having such a huge impact upon.

houseofshards• 12 years ago

" it's a shame that a person can start off knowing so little about the industry they end up having such a huge impact upon"

> Even if the assertion (that Zuckerberg did not know about Netscape before meeting Marc) is true, I do not agree that it is a shame. Perhaps just points to how young the tech industry is and how much more opportunity still exists to build great companies.

ChrisGaudreau2• 12 years ago

I'm only 19, and even I remember a time when Netscape was still pretty popular, or at least a lot of people had Navigator installed. It was even mentioned or displayed in a lot of programming books, articles, and presentations. I wonder how he managed to avoid knowledge of it for so long.

hkmurakami• 12 years ago

iirc I'm one year younger than Zuck but still remember upgrading to Netscape Navigator 4.0 from a previous version. But then again I grew up in SV and my dad was in the PC industry. Zuck grew up the the East coast, and that's probably the biggest difference.

bluedino• 12 years ago

I'm guessing it's just one of those made-up stories by a journalist somewhere. According to Wikipedia Zuckerberg was doing programming in the 90's and would very likely have came across Netscape during that time. But, by the time Facebook was 'invented', Netscape had been basically non-existent in the market for a few years.

josefresco• 12 years ago

Zuckerberg supposedly started writing code when in middle school, which would put him in the tech world in the mid-nineties (born in 84). Well within Netscape's run, so he must have had some amazing blinders on not to have been exposed to it.

This is one of those anecdotes people carry around that sounds good in interviews and/or illustrates a point but most likely got transformed over the years. Andreessen is positioning himself as an "elder" of sorts, one that has extensive experience (through multiple booms) and therefore wisdom within the tech world. This benefits him in multiple ways but the perception is the most important.

jokoon• 12 years ago

The American Enterprise Institute, I think, does a lot of good work.

meh

gregpilling• 12 years ago

from the article

"The one other thing that people are really underestimating is the impact of entertainment-industry economics applied to education. Right now, with MOOCS,11 the production values are pretty low: You’ll film the professor in the classroom. But let’s just project forward. In ten years, what if we had Math 101 online, and what if it was well regarded and you got fully accredited and certified? What if we knew that we were going to have a million students per semester? And what if we knew that they were going to be paying $100 per student, right? What if we knew that we’d have $100 million of revenue from that course per semester? What production budget would we be willing to field in order to have that course?

You could hire James Cameron to do it.

You could literally hire James Cameron to make Math 101. Or how about, let’s study the wars of the Roman Empire by actually having a VR [virtual reality] experience walking around the battlefield, and then like flying above the battlefield. And actually the whole course is looking and saying, “Here’s all the maneuvering that took place.” Or how about re-creating original Shakespeare plays in the Globe Theatre?"

-------------------------------

So @pmarca why not fund James Cameron then?

nrao123• 12 years ago

@pmarca doesn't have the skills to back Jim Cameron. You would need a Warner Brothers/HBO in conjunction etc to back creative artists. Education is a story telling business which may or may not have software at the core.

However, he could back the Warner Brothers equivalent in education who would go onto then back Jim Cameron.

Here is another post comparing the Education & Entertainment business in the Indian context: http://cgviews.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/%E2%80%8Beducation-e...

toomuchtodo• 12 years ago

Couldn't Khan Academy be that WB equivalent of education? Are they not doing the same thing, just with a much much smaller production budget?

sytelus3• 12 years ago

Andreessen is really missing the point here, IMO. If I could learn everything by watching videos and listening to lectures then there are already thousands of high quality documentaries, TTC courses and so on. The thing is that we humans don't learn subjects deeply just by watching bunch of videos but only by actually doing things.

For instance, there are probably 100s of videos and lectures on General Relativity out there. You can watch them endlessly and you would have some understanding of overall ideas but you would be at complete loss if someone takes simple exercise problems from any textbook and asks you to solve it. In other words, deep understanding doesn't happen simply by watching phenomenal documentaries.

Major component that really matters in any academic programs is homework and exercises. This is what allows students to get deep insights in to subject and make sure they can actually put their learning in to action. It also allows professors to verify that they have actually crossed the line from shallow understanding to deep understanding. This is what you pay for when you go to college. No amount of video lectures by James Cameron is going to replace this.

mercer2• 12 years ago

I agree, and I think the future is is on 'MOOCS' taking all this into account.

However, the homework and group work I've done in my studies (two different ones) was almost universally terrible. I had a strong suspicion that the teacher didn't even bother to properly grade our papers or assignments.

More importantly, there is no reason why the quality of homework and group work cannot benefit equally from scaling up.

rtpg• 12 years ago

I think one thing we could be doing is making more educational software. If you have a budget of $100 million then you could make a bunch of small prototype software to help tackle each class.

I am still convinced that a lot of my critical thinking skills came from the Jump Start series I played as a kid.

karmacondon• 12 years ago

I respectfully disagree. If you measure learning with homework questions from textbooks, then of course textbooks and the modern classroom will seem like the best way to learn. There are many ways to educate. Getting a person intensely interested in a subject is the best way to get them to learn more about it, and Hollywood does intense interest like nobody's business. Someone who associates math with special effects and compelling stories will be more receptive than someone who associates math with boring lectures and homework problems.

Someone who watched a documentary on General Relatively won't be able to perform the necessary calculations to get a rocket to the moon, but that doesn't mean that they didn't learn anything. A higher concept view that makes people say, "Oh, I get why gravity is cool now" could be more useful to most people than homework assignments that don't hold a lot of practical value. Someone is going to be an astrophysicist, needs rigorous practice and skill mastery. Someone who is gong to be a plumber might be better off learning the concepts in an intuitive way that provides an opportunity to learn more.

protonfish• 12 years ago

I agree with you, but I would take it even further. A problem with MOOCs (and I love that acronym so much, ya MOOC!) is there is a belief that the value of prestigious colleges lies primarily in listening to old white guys prattling on for hours. The true value of an Ivy league degree is making connections to other wealthy people and learning the secret handshakes or whatever to be allowed into aristocrat level job opportunities. The "education" at these places is a smoke screen and justification for this entitlement process. "It's not that my daddy is rich that I have been handed a plum job, its because I got just so darn educated at my fancy school!"

xorcist2• 12 years ago

This must be a joke. Right?

The example of the world's best teacher is .. James Cameron.

Why? Because he's rich? Throw money at rich people and the world will be better for it?

There is nothing to suggest you'd learn math better with high production values or 3D effects or even talented actors(!). I simply can't take this seriously.

mbesto• 12 years ago

AFAIK, MOOCs are not meeting their expectations both in terms of financials and educational success. Thus the idea that MOOCs are the answer for everything (in any form) is probably shortsighted. Happy to be proven wrong.

nazgulnarsil• 12 years ago

The one other thing that people are really underestimating is the impact of entertainment-industry economics applied to education. Right now, with MOOCS,11 the production values are pretty low: You’ll film the professor in the classroom. But let’s just project forward. In ten years, what if we had Math 101 online, and what if it was well regarded and you got fully accredited and certified? What if we knew that we were going to have a million students per semester? And what if we knew that they were going to be paying $100 per student, right? What if we knew that we’d have $100 million of revenue from that course per semester? What production budget would we be willing to field in order to have that course?

This makes me more optimistic about the future than I have been in a while.

sytelus3• 12 years ago

No, this doesn't change much. Before MOOCs we still had all the textbooks authored by same professors which anyone can buy for less than $100 and learn the subject on their own. MOOCs are very much a video version of those textbooks.

The major missing component of MOOCs is intensive homework problems that often requires you to consult professors in their office hours. And the time professors/TA spend in checking your homework.

The core thing to understand is that real learning doesn't happen when you are listening to lectures but it happens when you are working on homework and doing exercises where you struggle through and occasionally have to go back to professor's offices to get insight.

But the truth is that the price of education is mostly justified as "certification service". When you have degree from Stanford it means someone very reputable is backing up your claim that you have learned thing or two about something. That's mainly what you are paying as "tuition fees". MOOCs are relatively much weaker as certification services and hence chances of them getting trusted is same as chances of trusting degrees from many other "online universities".

mercer2• 12 years ago

I can't wait for the management-stronghold destroying our universities to be 'disrupted' by this, but considering the age and power of such institutions, it's going to be a difficult battle...

hudibras• 12 years ago

It's a bit disturbing that he thinks "American people" equals white people and that women just need to lean in more. It's all a meritocracy, you know, nothing we can do about it.

But, hey, maybe Those People can still nab a slot in a MOOC so it's all good...

Disruptive_Dave• 12 years ago

I took that more as "Don't get stuck in lobbying and writing blog posts and generally complaining about the state of things...take some real-life initiative and fight for what you believe you deserve".

w1ntermute• 12 years ago

It's a bit disturbing that he thinks "American people" equals white people

It's a lot more disturbing that the interviewer thinks Twitter isn't diverse because it's more than 50% white. How many industries out there are less than 50% white? Why is that an expectation when more than 50% of the population is white? Why is tech being singled out?

yummyfajitas6• 12 years ago

Why is tech being singled out?

Because tech is wealthy, visible, and weak. This makes tech an easy source of symbolic and financial victories for those who wish to wage a culture war.

The real question is why tech rolls over rather than fight back. (There are a few noble exceptions, e.g. Uber, Tesla and AirBnB, but they usually only fight back within their narrow battlezones rather than in general.)

jgalt212• 12 years ago

As a "white person" I am getting a little tired of running interference for the equally economically successful Asians and South Asians.

adventured• 12 years ago

In the US at least, asian people are more successful than white people are. Higher incomes, higher levels of college education, higher GPAs, higher SAT scores, lower unemployment rates, and lower rates of poverty.

The recent trend to pretend that asian people are white people as far as diversity is concerned is extremely disturbing. It points to an incredible racism at the heart of the arguments.

fillskills• 12 years ago

As an "asian person" I have never faced any discrimination in the US. Thank you world!

BUT, my wife and her female engineer friends face discrimination every single day at their jobs. The issues they face are just sad. So from my viewpoint, gender discrimination could not be more real and a very serious issue.

no_future• 12 years ago

Didn't you hear? Google was upset about not employing enough minorities even though 1/3 of its workforce is Asian, so according to Google Asians are white now. Diversity!

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/28/google-releases-emp...

mhd3• 12 years ago

"But this is the big story of our time—the elimination of poverty. We have people rising out of poverty at a global level and in the U.S. at unprecedented rates. In 50 years, we’ve gone from hunger being the dominant problem among lower-income people to obesity being the dominant problem."

Which is good, as it increased Walmart's share value? I'm really not sure how to read this, this is moving beyond SV techno-libertarianism into straight-forward Onion territory.

yummyfajitas6• 12 years ago

It's good that scarcity of material goods and services has ceased to be a problem, and now the only remaining problems are self inflicted.

Similarly it would be a good thing if no one murdered anyone else even if people occasionally committed suicide.

moomin• 12 years ago

But that's missing the point. There's still plenty of places where it's hard to impossible to eat _healthily_ in the U.S. Yes, we've won the calorific scarcity battle, but regarding obesity as self-inflicted lacks nuance at best and victim blames the poor and disadvantaged at worst.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert#Barriers_and_propos...

xorcist2• 12 years ago

I don't think the remaining problems are self incflicted. That's kind of the whole point. If these problems are systematic they might be even harder to solve, and then we haven't gotten closer to the eventual goal (except for the mentioned stock price of course).

mhd3• 12 years ago

I don't quite get how getting over the dust bowl famine means that poverty is solved. Obesity doesn't really imply that the poor are now just applying all their affluence wrongly and could easily buy houses if they just would get their hands off the Mickey D, so it's all their fault if that isn't the case.

"Self inflicted" is really over-simplifying things and sounds like something out of Rand (or misunderstood Nietzsche).

Tycho2• 12 years ago

You're really not sure?

He's pointing out that a major historical problem has given way to a lesser, far more tractable problem.

Frankly, I find your comment idiotic.

In conversation with Marc Andreessen

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