So well put. The sort of naive idealism that SV was filled with seems to have manifested into opportunism and naked ambition today. Not that it wasn’t unexpected , it’s just sad now.
yeah, I'm sure the original version was way over-romanticized, though this version seems to have dropped a lot of the pretense. Which, I don't know, maybe there's something to be said for the honesty, I guess?
Let us know when you finally decide to quit tech and become a novelist. I'd definitely read. My pitch is a murder mystery set at a VC event in SF. Succession meets Murder on the Orient Express? Give it some thought!
Why not, I hear you can write books in an afternoon these days. There will probably even a YC startup for that.
(But, more seriously, that one Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale is the full extent of my fiction writing. I do have one other idea for a more serious thing that may make it on here one day, but man, I do not know what I'm doing when writing that sort of stuff.)
Fascinating post. I used to produce video for Silicon Valley companies (HP, Apple, and lots of startups) ages ago so it’s interesting to get such an articulate take on what’s it’s become. Money, money, money has always made the world go round but it’s disheartening that the tech world has lost whatever soul it had. I escaped to the foothills of the Sierras to live a more bucolic rural life over 20 years ago and so glad I did.
I do sometimes wonder how much of it is money too. Like, if you gave people the choice of being:
- The host of that TBPN show, where you have a big audience and are part of the cultural zeitgeist and all of that, or
- An anonymous AI engineer at Meta making some absurd eight figure annual salary
I'm not sure what people would choose. I think more people would want the first one? And I kind of think that's really want a lot of people are chasing. They want to get rich with their startup, sure, but what they really want is the status that they think comes with being rich.
this is just fantastic, Benn!! really big fan. the cynicism mixed nonetheless with some admiration is something I feel all the time. this makes me feel less in my own head about this industry
Thanks! That's kind of my overarching view of the whole silicon valley thing, I think. It's easy to be polarized around it, and a lot of the commentary seems to take a pretty extreme view on one side or the other ("it's saving the world;" "it's unrepentant evil"), neither of which strike me as particularly accurate. It's messy, does some good stuff, but also often does stuff with a kind of blundering comic book villainy. Which is bad, but on top of something that's sorta good? And is also often funny?
oooh, there's actually kind of interesting thing there I've never thought of. We definitely have moved on from that, but when I've thought about that before (eg, the link below, with that exact clip), I never thought much about the whole "have an impact" thing that's become it's replacement, and just saw it as stale marketing getting a refresh. But there might be something more subtle to it, where the canned phrases that resonate with people are moving away from these altruistic things, and more towards power and influence.
a new "Greed is good, greed works" generation [assume you have your own mental clip for this one but happy to supply it for anyone who is too young https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kzKE-ErSBN0 ]
I’ve been thinking about this dynamic for a while. The real purpose of “AI safety” research is to prevent regulation. They say they’re working to prevent the paper clip maximizer, but we’re already being paper-clipped. The first and only AI law will be to shield liability for Zuckerberg, Altman and Elon.
There's also this big emphasis on very big and apocalyptic risks (like chatGPT going full Terminator or it taking all our jobs), which, on one hand, I guess those would be very bad things and so we should talk about them. But on the other hand, it seems to distract a lot from the less dramatic potential effects, where a bunch of things that we used to assume are true - pictures are usually real, it's hard to make good arguments, thinking takes time and is a learned skill, etc etc - no longer are. It seems like we'd be better served talking more about those things, which seem both nuanced and hard to predict, than stuff like a misaligned skynet.
Exactly. We're in the 2009 period of "Facebook is so cool!" By the time we get to the 2016 stage of weaponized disinformation and hacking, they will be too politically powerful to regulate.
Same thing happened with smartphones in general. Phone-based gambling is financial cancer.
Yeah, I have a half-written thing about how, even in the fairly narrow ways I regularly use it, you very quickly feel it forming into a crutch, where it's hard to imagine it being taken away, and even harder to imagine me outright giving it up, without rather serious self-control and intentional intervention.
So well put. The sort of naive idealism that SV was filled with seems to have manifested into opportunism and naked ambition today. Not that it wasn’t unexpected , it’s just sad now.
yeah, I'm sure the original version was way over-romanticized, though this version seems to have dropped a lot of the pretense. Which, I don't know, maybe there's something to be said for the honesty, I guess?
Let us know when you finally decide to quit tech and become a novelist. I'd definitely read. My pitch is a murder mystery set at a VC event in SF. Succession meets Murder on the Orient Express? Give it some thought!
Why not, I hear you can write books in an afternoon these days. There will probably even a YC startup for that.
(But, more seriously, that one Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale is the full extent of my fiction writing. I do have one other idea for a more serious thing that may make it on here one day, but man, I do not know what I'm doing when writing that sort of stuff.)
I support gonzo journalism in the bay
I have no idea what this blog is, but I would take that as an ambition.
Fascinating post. I used to produce video for Silicon Valley companies (HP, Apple, and lots of startups) ages ago so it’s interesting to get such an articulate take on what’s it’s become. Money, money, money has always made the world go round but it’s disheartening that the tech world has lost whatever soul it had. I escaped to the foothills of the Sierras to live a more bucolic rural life over 20 years ago and so glad I did.
I do sometimes wonder how much of it is money too. Like, if you gave people the choice of being:
- The host of that TBPN show, where you have a big audience and are part of the cultural zeitgeist and all of that, or
- An anonymous AI engineer at Meta making some absurd eight figure annual salary
I'm not sure what people would choose. I think more people would want the first one? And I kind of think that's really want a lot of people are chasing. They want to get rich with their startup, sure, but what they really want is the status that they think comes with being rich.
this is just fantastic, Benn!! really big fan. the cynicism mixed nonetheless with some admiration is something I feel all the time. this makes me feel less in my own head about this industry
Thanks! That's kind of my overarching view of the whole silicon valley thing, I think. It's easy to be polarized around it, and a lot of the commentary seems to take a pretty extreme view on one side or the other ("it's saving the world;" "it's unrepentant evil"), neither of which strike me as particularly accurate. It's messy, does some good stuff, but also often does stuff with a kind of blundering comic book villainy. Which is bad, but on top of something that's sorta good? And is also often funny?
I really want this to be funny but I can't quite get there...Can we bring back So. Mo. Lo. please... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8C5sjjhsso
I mean, this blog has two aspirations - to be as good as Matt Levine, or as good as HBO's Silicon Valley.
Sadly, it's never come close to living up to either.
To be fair (and to my point) your subject matter is WAY harder to laugh at but facing the reality that we have moved on from "making the world a better place" is important to acknowledge. https://clip.cafe/auntie-mame-1958/i-lived/?srsltid=AfmBOorIx3LaFWMQ1YkzSzPK88ZadTDUt5XJcKY4o53CznMf-EuN8DMZ
oooh, there's actually kind of interesting thing there I've never thought of. We definitely have moved on from that, but when I've thought about that before (eg, the link below, with that exact clip), I never thought much about the whole "have an impact" thing that's become it's replacement, and just saw it as stale marketing getting a refresh. But there might be something more subtle to it, where the canned phrases that resonate with people are moving away from these altruistic things, and more towards power and influence.
https://benn.substack.com/p/free-fall?utm_source=publication-search#:~:text=We%20were%20there%2C%20we%20say%2C%20to%20%E2%80%9Chave%20an%20impact%2C%E2%80%9D%20the%20cliche%20that%E2%80%99s%20replaced%20its%20now%2Dparodied%20predecessor%2C%20%E2%80%9Cmake%20the%20world%20a%20better%20place.%E2%80%9D
a new "Greed is good, greed works" generation [assume you have your own mental clip for this one but happy to supply it for anyone who is too young https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kzKE-ErSBN0 ]
I do wonder what this means for TED - essentially demo days for "making the world a better place" ...
I’ve been thinking about this dynamic for a while. The real purpose of “AI safety” research is to prevent regulation. They say they’re working to prevent the paper clip maximizer, but we’re already being paper-clipped. The first and only AI law will be to shield liability for Zuckerberg, Altman and Elon.
There's also this big emphasis on very big and apocalyptic risks (like chatGPT going full Terminator or it taking all our jobs), which, on one hand, I guess those would be very bad things and so we should talk about them. But on the other hand, it seems to distract a lot from the less dramatic potential effects, where a bunch of things that we used to assume are true - pictures are usually real, it's hard to make good arguments, thinking takes time and is a learned skill, etc etc - no longer are. It seems like we'd be better served talking more about those things, which seem both nuanced and hard to predict, than stuff like a misaligned skynet.
Exactly. We're in the 2009 period of "Facebook is so cool!" By the time we get to the 2016 stage of weaponized disinformation and hacking, they will be too politically powerful to regulate.
Same thing happened with smartphones in general. Phone-based gambling is financial cancer.
Yeah, I have a half-written thing about how, even in the fairly narrow ways I regularly use it, you very quickly feel it forming into a crutch, where it's hard to imagine it being taken away, and even harder to imagine me outright giving it up, without rather serious self-control and intentional intervention.