
Marc Andreessen: Turn Detroit Into Drone Valley - kloncks
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/turn-detroit-into-drone-valley-107853.html#.U5-Nt41dU08
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msujaws
Why drone valley and not autonomous vehicle valley? Seems more prime for the
motor city.

Not to mention, Detroit already has some large neighborhoods that are mostly
vacant and the roads could be shifted over to test grounds for the autonomous
vehicles. Michigan endures extremes in all four seasons, as compared to Santa
Clara County which has pretty moderate weather year round.

But I don't think Marc was specifically saying that Detroit is for drones. I
think that was merely an alliteration. I do think Marc is right in that
specialization is the key.

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drzaiusapelord
>Santa Clara County which has pretty moderate weather year round.

Except no one has figured out how to drive in the snow or even heavy rain.
Moving self-driving cars to Detroit won't magically fix that. I imagine we're
a breakthrough or two away in computer vision processing and fuzzy logic/AI to
crack that nut.

While I fully appreciate the self-driving car and have watched more than a
couple videos on how they work, they all require the ability to see things
like lines painted on the road, a decent distance ahead, etc. What happens
when heavy snow comes down and driving is less a deterministic act of
following lines and crossing intersections and more of a poorly thought out
social contract involving every driver's idea of what workable chaos looks
like? What happens when your visibility is terrible? What happens when
veterans know what roads to avoid and which to take but the GPS-based self-
driving car goes the cheapst/most logical way? What happens when you're at an
intersection that's out or the lights are covered in snow and everyone is
stopped honking at one another? Or a car is stuck in the middle of the
intersection? Do you dumbly drive through or avoid that route because its not
plowed correctly or plowed at all?

As a Chicagoan, I know driving in the snow is a bitch. The success stories of
the self-driving car will come from places like Santa Clara for the
foreseeable future. We're just not there yet and Detroit can't help us, nor
can we help it.

>I do think Marc is right in that specialization is the key.

Uh, we tried that in Detroit. Regular cars. Didn't work out too well. I think
Andreeson suffers from the ivory tower economist disease. He's out of touch
outside of his domain. He just points fingers at things and acts like this is
all a simple command economy, "Do this there! Do that here!" Life tends to be
more complex than that.

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true_religion
> Except no one has figured out how to drive in the snow or even heavy rain.

I thought the advise for human beings trying to drive in the snow or heavy
rain was always the same: don't.

If you do, you're taking a huge risk, so don't go anywhere unless you have to
(e.g. need groceries or else will die).

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Except it stopped snowing hours ago and the plows have already done their job.
Still, there's snow on the ground, limited visibility of the painted lines,
people driving like jerks, people sliding out on black ice, etc.

Some towns don't even plow non-major streets but if that's the street you live
on, then you need to drive on it.

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pistle
Definitely. If there is a municipality which, for a myriad of reasons, isn't
winning the current cycle of competition for industry, definitely deregulate
the crap out of it and use it as a test bed for the products designed and
built by Silicon Valley. It's the closest thing to the third world, am I
right?

The more he tweetstorms and drops half-baked opinion pieces, the more I see
him as having been smoking crack while watching TED talks on repeat.

Detroit is not some one-dimensional shit hole ripe (it's multidimensional and
not ripe) for taking on the burden of someone's experiments. It's like
municipal eugenics or something?

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jqm
"if we think of airspace as the next Internet-like platform.."

What? Did I read the correctly? No offense but this piece seems a bit off
kilter. It's one thing to make money investing in things like social network
websites, yet another to demand some kind of government sanctioned libertarian
utopia and expect all kinds of foolish (and sometimes outright anti-social)
schemes will bear fruit or even ever be permitted to grow beyond a certain
socially tolerable size... Galt's Gulch was a fictional place and likely
always will be. As long as the current system (on which the "innovators" rely)
is in place anyway.

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briantakita
I would request that Mr. Andreessen ensure that the companies that he invests
in are transparent & ethical with their interactions, particularly with the US
Government.

Drones can be a wonderful tool to empower us. They can also be a powerful tool
to enslave us. Skynet anyone?

Some sort of effective regulation is probably necessary. Not the kind of
regulation involving a former/future Drone Manufacturing executive/lobbist
being the chair of the regulatory body.

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madaxe_again
Based on his stance on how terrorists are bad because they're bad, I wouldn't
hold your breath.

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rmason
There are already a group of drone companies in Detroit. I've met several of
them. They want to be able to fly over the city but so far have been blocked.

[http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20140330/NEWS/303309969...](http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20140330/NEWS/303309969/firms-
set-drone-flight-plans)

Giving them a large area to test would give the city a huge advantage over the
rest of the US and I believe drive more drone companies to relocate in Detroit
where they would find cheap real estate and an abundance of engineering
talent.

I think Mark Andreesen undoubtedly knows this and that is why he picked
Detroit for his example.

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adc82
Detroit has a myriad of problems, but I think this could be great for the
city. A big problem with Detroit is that it's a huge city, but a lot of people
have left, so there are whole neighborhoods with only a few residents. This
makes it hard common government services such as garbage pick up and police
force to cover the whole city. The government could provide incentives for any
entrepreneurs willing to come to Detroit and help solve these problems using
drones and/or autonomous cars. The pay off would be huge on both sides.
Autonomous cars would especially click with the culture in Detroit too, being
that it is the motor city.

~~~
judk
Instead of drones and cars, perhaps it would be simpler to just relocate
individuals and businesses toward downtown.

~~~
adc82
I would agree, but the problem is that many of the individuals don't want to
be reallocated and refuse to the leave their homes.

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kajarya
The author forgot that one of the impetus for Silicon Valley becoming what it
is in an influx of government money.

~~~
orbifold
It all began with army proving grounds and military research right?

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h1karu
>Provide incentives to attract scientists, firms and users;

> Establish a favorable business environment and regulations.

> Except … this approach to innovation clusters hasn’t really worked. Some
> have even dismissed these government-driven efforts as “modern-day snake
> oil.”

I would argue that such an approach has never actually been attempted only lip
service has been paid. The types of solutions you describe above are
politically untenable because they involve significantly lowering taxes.

I would say that Nevada is an example of a place where this kind of approach
has worked. Look at Las Vegas it's a metropolis that sprung up out of nowhere
in the middle of a vast desert wasteland. Maybe Michigan could learn a thing
or two from Nevada and begin by lowering it's state income tax to 0%.

~~~
judk
Las Vegas is big because of the gambling money, not tax structure. Compare to
the rest of the state.

~~~
h1karu
Las Vegas got it's start because of the gambling money, but it has maintained
itself as nationally relevant over the years despite it's inhospitable weather
and isolated environs due to low taxation but also because of the "hands off
of business" stance that the state has taken which is helpful to a diversity
of industries other than just gambling, ask Zappos CEO about it.

In my opinion it's not a terrible choice of a place to launch a startup either
because you could poach employees away from both the Bay Area and LA job
markets by showing them what kind of spacious luxury highrise accommodations
they could be enjoying for similar money to what they spend on their 600square
foot rental in the City. The fact that they'd pay no state income taxes just
makes the job offer all the more enticing. I suspect there's going to be more
of this kind of thing going on in the future especially as Zappos continues to
invest significant funds into renovation of certain districts.

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IvyMike
I wonder if he picked Robocop city on purpose.

~~~
qbrass
The prophecy must be fulfilled.

Joking aside, the reasoning behind choosing Detroit in real life isn't much
different than OCP choosing it in the movies. The city's broke, has crime
problems, and you sell people on the idea of bringing it back to it's former
glory.

~~~
ekianjo
"The Future has a Silver Lining" :)

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steele
At least he acknowledges a weakness of the Silicon Valley clone efforts.

