
The Web Summit: Watching the World Rot - azuajef
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/11/the-warped-world-of-web-summit/508442/?single_page=true
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mben94
Uncomfortably accurate. If tech is supposed to make the world a better place
(however you define better) and the people we inflict products on walk away
disgusted by the cutting edge of tech, that's a problem.

It doesn't matter how poorly the article articulates itself, when devs care
more about the next round of investment, or simply being able to say "I work
in a start-up" than if their idea is actually going to help people, then we
are doing it wrong.

It is entirely understandable to appear as a Luddite when the people
developing and pushing the technology have no regard for the wider societal
impact of their creations.

~~~
detaro
Is the Web Summit "the cutting edge of tech"? I'm not sure where my impression
comes from, but I don't particularly associate it with high quality, more with
mass.

But even if it is not, it likely represents a large subset of the "scene", so
observations about it are still interesting.

~~~
mben94
Yeah, maybe cutting edge is the wrong phrase. Maybe "latest things seeking
funding / promotion" would have been more accurate.

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existencebox
I can't help but hear echoes to the same motions made at the onset of the
industrial revolution, and almost every decade since. Humanity does not die,
it just changes, but a given generation often seems very locked in time in its
perceptions and what it recognizes as "human".

If the article was a thrust against a work obsessed culture, it could have
done that better and more concisely. If the article was a thrust against how
distinct the tech zeitgeist has become from what other bubbles in the world
care about, it could have done that better and more concisely. Perhaps I'm
missing the point, in which case feel free to enlighten me, but this article
didn't accomplish that.

(Some irony in that since I'd typically be the first to agree with either
statement, but I found myself asking repeatedly what I was supposed to be
convinced of in the article, other than some "vague almost luddite anger" at
the tech community)

~~~
CodeMage
Funny, that. The industrial revolution brought very real problems and caused
very real suffering. True, humanity doesn't die, it just changes, but that's
cold comfort to significant chunks of humanity that die precisely because of
those changes. It reminds me of something I read yesterday:

 _" Capitalism was so cruel and brutal 100 years ago that people came up with
an even worse solution, communism. Rather than make compromises that would
take the wind out of communism's sails, the 1 percent of the day decided to
back fascism. This caused a war so catastrophic that the 1 percent understood
they had no choice but to accept reforms that would make life bearable for
regular people.

"Then communism collapsed, taking the daily threat of nuclear war with it.
Today's 1 percent should be thanking God they got out of the 20th century
alive and vowing never to make those mistakes again. Instead they've decided
to make every mistake again and turn capitalism back into something that human
beings cannot live with._

It's from an article[1] by Jon Schwarz in The Intercept, about Donald Trump's
victory, but that little bit resonated strongly with me. It's becoming
increasingly obvious that something about capitalism needs to change; I'm not
sure what, but we can all see effects everywhere around us. The Web Summit is
just one more example of what happens when you live in a system that focuses
solely on optimizing one variable at the expense of all others.

[1]: [https://theintercept.com/2016/11/09/donald-trump-will-be-
pre...](https://theintercept.com/2016/11/09/donald-trump-will-be-president-
this-is-what-we-do-next/)

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keithpeter
I'm having to read the article in w3m as The Atlantic is convinced that I have
an advert blocking script installed. I don't. The network I am on has
aggressive filtering.

Sort of goes with the theme really does it not?

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zengid
Is this journalism or a blog-rant?

~~~
glup
It's cultural criticism.

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woah
"I went to a professional conference of a profession I don't have anything to
do with and wrote an overwrought blog post a month later"

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kyleschiller
I feel like I'd be a lot more convinced by this if the author made a genuine
attempt to understand the conference instead of interpreting his ignorance as
proof of tech's "rot".

    
    
      "brings the next generation of B2C, B2B, B2E platforms to a high qualified partners network supported by a great business model,” you can make the vague assumption that all this gibberish might actually mean something to someone somewhere."
    

Sure, we have jargon, just like any other industry. For anyone who cares to
take 2 seconds, it's really not difficult to understand that B2B is a business
selling to other businesses.

    
    
      "This isn’t meaning, in any of its usual senses, something that exists to be understood, but the zombie signifier, words building and feeding on each other to form a system terrifyingly self-sustaining and utterly opaque."
    

Again, that's basically how all language works. Language is a self-sustaining
thing. I agree that it's opaque, but not uniquely so.

As much as I dislike this article though, I do agree with the basic premise
that tech really is filled with claims like “data is the new performance” and
an overuse of "innovation", I just don't believe that glorifying your
alienation is useful for anyone.

Aside from using Google to understand specific pieces of jargon, we can
actually take a step back and understand why it develops in the first place.
In a world where companies rely on VC backing, and startup valuations obey a
power law[0], entrepreneurs effectively have no choice other than grandiose
claims if they want any hope of securing funding. Due to massive uncertainty,
it's literally not worth it for VCs to invest in a company that doesn't have
the potential to become hugely successful[1].

None of this is to say that the jargon is justified or good, just that there
are actually ways to understand this stuff that can be useful for people who
want to help shape the world instead of leaving us with

    
    
      "The end of humanity had already arrived; it was everywhere around us."
    

[0] [http://reactionwheel.net/2015/06/power-laws-in-
venture.html](http://reactionwheel.net/2015/06/power-laws-in-venture.html)

[1] [https://blog.ycombinator.com/why-vcs-sometimes-push-
companie...](https://blog.ycombinator.com/why-vcs-sometimes-push-companies-to-
burn-too-fast/)

~~~
matt4077
The author admits that the B2B & B2E tagline may have actual meaning. His
example of a completely meaningless slogan is "“transforming the way people
search and protect all the things they can’t live without”.

You don't need any technical knowledge to see that as indeed almost completely
devoid of meaning.

This isn't a luddite. He's not criticizing self-driving cars or the cure for
cancer. His issue is with the 90% of startups which are completely which could
vanish at any moment without altering the course of history one bit.

It's not an appeal for standstill – it's a motivational speech to search for
meaning.

