
A Magical Time to Start a Movement - dennybritz
http://dennybritz.com/blog/2013/10/23/a-magical-time-to-start-a-movement/
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pessimizer
>Hotels and taxi companies fear the sharing economy, Airbnb, Uber and Lyft.

I thought the sharing economy was bittorrent and Free Software. Aren't AirBnB,
Uber, and Lyft part of the home piecework subcontractor temp-for-life economy?

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zwieback
"The government ... disrupted by a group of people building something on their
laptops in Silicon Valley."

Right below this quote from your blog, in the "From around the web" section:
"Obamacare could soon cause massive layoffs."

I think it's a magical time to get people wasting time on their phones, maybe
solve some minor efficiency problems around the edges of Obamacare but SV is
the worst possible choice to solve the big problems we're facing.

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thetylerhayes
I haven't read OP's piece yet, but I agree with @dennybritz that there are
plenty of us here in SV who care about solving the big problems.

For example we just launched Prime, an iPhone app that allows you to download
your medical record from any doctor and share health activity with friends and
family. [http://stayinyourprime.com](http://stayinyourprime.com). We're not
the only ones in healthcare. There's also Practice Fusion, drchrono,
DoctorBase, and countless others.

And on the education side there's Inkling, for example. And on the banking
side there's Simple (though they're actually based in Portland). And of course
YC famously backed Watsi. Maybe you have different examples in mind of what
big problems are but it does seem to me that as we are seeing more startups
overall that means we're seeing more startups addressing bigger/more
meaningful problems.

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felipe
> an iPhone app that allows you to download your medical record from any
> doctor and share health activity with friends and family

I mean no offense to you personally, but I fail to understand how this problem
fits in a world in which 2.5 billion people lack basic sanitation.

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VladRussian2
>I mean no offense to you personally, but I fail to understand how this
problem fits in a world in which 2.5 billion people lack basic sanitation.

some of the people making big on some app will become the next Musk (though
unfortunately some will become the next Thiel) and will work on the big
problems our civilization faces. That is is the beauty of SV - it allows
people doing business here (or even merely employed) to generate resources to
try to tackle something bigger. It is like springboard.

~~~
CodeMage
Let's be honest: how many Thiels per Musk do we get? Somehow I fail to see the
beauty in this alleged springboard.

~~~
VladRussian2
the beauty here that it sometimes produces a Musk at all. Nothing else does
it. The closest we'd got is Gates - while not SV geographically, it is the
same approach - make money in hi-tech and apply it to solve a big problem.

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gopher1
Government more or less created Silicon Valley (government subsidies,
guaranteed government contracts, direct government investment), yet it is now
"powerless"? If anything, Silicon Valley is a great example of the power of
government.

Silicon Valley has yet to solve any of the big problems in the world; poverty,
healthcare, climate change.

The idea that there's no war going on the world, or that you don't need
universities is complete nonsense.

For sure some things are changing, but that's always been the case. This blog
post, and the bizarre idea that everything must be "disrupted" (nobody knows
exactly what that means) is a perfect example of the insular, ignorant, and
shallow attitudes that pervade Silicon Valley.

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VladRussian2
>The idea that there's no war going on the world, or that you don't need
universities is complete nonsense.

...

> the insular, ignorant, and shallow attitudes that pervade Silicon Valley

these ideas and attitudes pervade only very young or very rich heads. It is
also natural that such heads are the most vocal ones, especially when they are
both - very young and very rich - at the same time.

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oscargrouch
>We build things, convince people to use them, and fight the status quo

How the status quo would fight the status quo?

Paraphrasing what a wise man once said:

How can a kingdom divided against itself survive?

The people behind all these cool new projects are the same people from the old
industries, if thats not the reality in the beginning that soon will change as
long its a profitable business.. the status quo may not be in the seed phase,
or even in the initial funding, but definetly will be a part of it on the
IPO.. and thats how even the cool projects end to serve the status quo..

The only way to really fight the status quo, the establishment is
decentralizing profits and power.. otherwise, its always the same story, since
the beginning of the civilization

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voyou
Nice try, but I think this is a little bit _too_ obvious to really work as a
parody of Silicon Valley vacuousness.

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eterm
This is magical thinking. The reality is that established players will use
their positions to buy out, advertise out and just generally squeeze out any
threats to their business.

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hackula1
Bell and IBM show that this does not always work. MS may be the next example
in ~10 years.

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mcculley
>With MOOCs we no longer need universities to educate people.

I am not convinced of this. I think MOOCs are great and certainly a game
changer for domains like computer science. But there's lots of domains that I
know nothing about that I am not convinced I could master via an online course
(e.g., biotech or anything else that requires expensive equipment).

Even where MOOCs are the best answer, isn't the best provider of a MOOC going
to be a university? Maybe just what we think of as a university will change.

~~~
epsylon
A MOOC is a scalable replacement for a traditional class lecture. It's not
intended to replace labs or hands-on experience, nor the value of being
immersed into a campus, mixing with students and teachers...

That being said, MOOCs can help alleviate a lot of the cost of a University
degree.

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herbig
It's a magical time to have been born in a western country, but then that's
been true for a while now.

By "every individual wields great power" you probably mean those with access
to technology, relative peace, and education. War hasn't gone away we just
don't fight them at home anymore.

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hackula1
Quality of life is up just about everywhere else as well over the last several
decades.

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jacknews
Yeah, We'll learn how governments magically turned the 90s internet dream of
anarchistic freedom into Big Brother. And how network analysis, in real time,
can instantly identify the core members of any "movement", and if
"inappropriate" quickly stomp on them.

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wildgift
The tech side is great. The wages side... not so great.

Also, it's not a "sharing economy" when people are selling things.

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jeremyx
...keep telling yourself that.

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gboudrias
Flagged because condescension is not an argument nor is it constructive.

~~~
jeremyx
Fair enough. Yes there is massive disruption and potential for more, but it's
a fallacy to think that power lies in the hands of individuals.

The myth that "...a single person can build something on his or her laptop,
instantly reach billions of people, and create a movement if he can convince
others to believe in the idea." just helps concentrate power into the entities
with the most processing power. Who's networks are needed to reach all those
people?

Jaron Lanier puts it a bit more eloquently than I do:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/opinion/sunday/fixing-
the-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/opinion/sunday/fixing-the-digital-
economy.html)

