Attack of the Garage Guys

Balaji Srinivasan, from Stanford, gave this talk (I don’t know the word for it), where he asked this provocative question:
“Is the USA the Microsoft of nations?”
That’s Microsoft as in obsolete, a dinosaur.

Back in 1998, Bill Gates feared that Microsoft’s rule would end not due to the likes of Oracle but due to “some guys in a garage”. Those guys turned out to be Larry and Sergey (Google’s founders). And now, says Srinivasan, Silicon Valley is becoming the garage guys to the entire US!

Pointing out that the post-war US was run by 4 cities (Boston: education; New York: Madison Avenue and Wall Street; Los Angeles: music and Hollywood; and Washington DC: laws), he next says that Silicon Valley is “putting a horse head in all of their beds”: that’s a declaration of war, Godfather style.

If you’re wondering how, consider how the Valley’s outputs are taking on the traditional bastions of those 4 cities. Online courses, Khan Academy, and Udacity are the Valley’s assault on higher education. What Napster started, iTunes and YouTube extended in the clash with the entertainment industry. Twitter, Blogger and AdWords compete with traditional media and forms of communication. And then there’s Bitcoin, the Internet’s own currency. Used to be the preserve of governments. Not anymore.

No wonder then that there is a backlash from, well, the Gang of Four. Problems in the economy? They say “iPhone and Google that done did it, not the bailouts and the bankruptcies and the bombings”. So how should the Valley respond?

Fighting is not an option: “they have aircraft carriers; we don’t.” That leaves voice or exit as the other options:
“Voice is basically changing the system from within, whereas exit is leaving to create a new system…voice in the context of a country is voting, while exit is emigration…a voice gains much more attention when people are leaving in droves... exit amplifies voice.”
Srinivasan calls it Silicon Valley’s ultimate exit:
“What do I mean by Silicon Valley’s ultimate exit? It basically means: build an opt-in society, ultimately outside the US, run by technology... we can build a world run by software… 3D printing…Bitcoins…Quantified Self…telepresence”

Think this is all far fetched? Paypal founder Peter Thiel is into seasteading; Elon Musk wants to build a Mars colony; and Larry Page wants to set aside a part of the world for unregulated experimentation.

We do live in interesting times…

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why we Deceive Ourselves

In their book, The Elephant in the Brain , the authors describe this weird aspect of deception that we practice: deceiving ourselves! That is so weird: “If our minds contain maps of our worlds, what good comes from having an inaccurate version of these maps?” The Sigmund Freud school of thought treats self-deception as a defense mechanism, “a way for the ego to protect itself”. The mind seeks to protect itself from anxiety and other negative emotions. Many object to this reasoning: since accurate information is so critical to our survival, surely distorting information would be dangerous. Wouldn’t the goal of protecting our self-esteem have been better achieved by making the brain’s self-esteem mechanism stronger instead? The new school of thought explains self-deception as “primarily outward-facing, manipulative, and ultimately self-serving”. This is based on Thomas Schelling’s work on game theory: “In a variety of scenarios, limiting or sabotaging yourself is the winn...
Read more

Europe #3 - Innsbruck

The last city we visited in Europe was Innsbruck in the Austrian Alps. After the cold and windy experience (at times) of Paris and Netherlands, Innsbruck was a wonderful change – it didn’t feel that cold, it was not windy all of which made it easy to walk around. Something absolutely necessary given how scenic the place is.   Since the hotel check-in time was much later in the day, we left the baggage and went to the Swarovski HQ-cum-museum about an hour by bus from Innsbruck. The crystal exhibits were brilliant – colorful, bright, shiny. Jewellery aside, it was a display of what one can do with crystals. While my wife and daughter loved the jewellery, I liked the superhero themed exhibits of Batman, Spiderman, the Hulk, and Star Wars. We didn’t buy anything there, though we did buy stuff in the Swarovski store in Innsbruck – jewellery, not the superhero stuff.   Innsbruck is a major tourist attraction during the skiing season but now in summer, we saw many groups of ...
Read more

The Thrill of the Chase

So many people complain about the difficulty in making decisions while shopping. Do you buy Brand X that gives 20% extra free? Or Brand Y that has 10% off? Or Brand Z that gives something else free with it? Do you buy that flat screen TV today or wait for the sale at Diwali? Now since the customer is king, shouldn’t companies be simplifying pricing choices? Like maybe offering consistently low prices all the time? Not so fast, as the US store, JC Penney discovered to its cost. Turns out that while people do complain about pricing choices, they are irrational. Also, they enjoy the thrill of the chase. Huh? The word “sale” acts like a siren call for many people: it lures them in to make that purchase. Consistently low prices don’t do the same. Besides, if a competitor lowers their prices just one time of the year, and Poof! Suddenly that low price claim becomes suspect in shoppers’ eyes. Then there are those sites that offer coupons: have lunch at Restaurant A on Wedne...
Read more