New posts

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="BlueMark" data-source="post: 1272753" data-attributes="member: 13298">RE: Prediction for the 20sI consider political correctness and SJWism a symptom of the size of the tech giants. Companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook were still somewhat innovative 10 years ago. Today, not so much. Most of the work that goes into their technology is incremental. Yet these companies kept hiring more people and now have workforces several times larger than 10 years ago.At some point, these companies' success drew in a different type of personality than those who built the original technology that made these companies successful. People who are of a lower average skill level, especially those who went into the tech sector for the money and not because they were genuinely driven to do good work on technology. As these companies turned into bloated corporate bureaucracies, groupthink became more prevalent, and there was no longer much room to challenge the status quo in favor of true innovation. Instead, we get gimmicks like the Macbook TouchBar or constant Gmail/Youtube/Maps UI redesigns that cater to the lowest common denominator of consumers.The focus on political correctness is just part of the groupthink, and also probably fomented by the lower status and less capable members of these companies, who still want to feel important and justify their position by taking a stance of moral superiority.The "rolling internet blackouts" that you speak of do happen. We've seen outages with Google Cloud, Facebook, and Twitter in recent months. I don't think this is due to the death of meritocracy and the increase in incompetent people (both of which are real phenomena), but rather due to the sheer complexity of the systems that are being built to transport massive amounts of data. The obsessive focus on big data is another symptom of the decline of the tech sector and its lack of genuine innovation.Expanding on my earlier predictions about the tech industry:1. FAANG will lose their luster to many job seekers once people realize that they are no longer the luxurious workplaces of the past. People will still want to work there due to better pay and benefits compared to other companies. There will be a lot more stress due to the politics and increased overhead of bigger companies.2. The quality of life for tech workers in the USA will also go down, as it has in the past decade. The major tech hubs in SF, LA, NYC, and Seattle all have problems with traffic and homeless people. Commutes will be longer and more soul-sucking, or in the case of NYC, less reliable and with more crazy people yelling at you. Self-driving cars will not arrive soon enough to save the day. A major recession might improve the commute times for those who are lucky enough to keep their jobs.3. VR will be big. This will likely be the next big tech innovation for Silicon Valley and FAANG, although it will not stop their decline. But VR will have minimal use outside of porn and video games as more young men lose themselves in virtual worlds while western society slides further into cultural nihilism. Best case, it will be used in nice-to-have areas such as Maps StreetView or viewing a house on AirBnB or Zillow. There will be little improvement to what happens in real life for the average person.4. Silicon Valley will lose much of its relevance as the above trends unfold, and there will not be any new unicorn startups that turn into the next Google or Facebook. The sad reality of the startup ecosystem in 2019 is that it is still better financially to work at FAANG instead of a startup, if you're not a founder. With sky-high housing costs and the closing of TechShop and Maker Faire, the traditional Silicon Valley culture of building-tech-in-your-garage is dead.5. There will be a continued shift in tech innovation away from Silicon Valley and the rest of the US, and toward Asia. Technology already has a much greater beneficial impact on quality of life in Asia versus USA. This gap will continue to grow. This is happening in several areas:- consumer tech: China produces drones and DIY tech, while SV is trying to find new ways of monetizing people spending time on the internet and on their phones- industrial tech: East Asian factories use robotic assembly lines, while the US depends on cheap imported labor and outsourcing of manufacturing.- service tech: Restaurants in Japan let you use tablets to order sushi, and then deliver your order on a toy bullet train. This tech has existed for at least a decade. US restaurants are only starting to get into automation, while diners are expected to tip 20% or more just for a waiter doing his job.- public transportation: China has maglev, Japan is developing linear Shinkansen and self-driving trains. In the US, self-driving car tech is much harder to get right, while the rail infrastructure remains third-world despite spending several times as much per mile/km compared to other developed countries.</blockquote>

Verification