
In Tech We Trust? A Debate with Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen [video] - jordn
http://www.milkeninstitute.org/presentations/mediapage.taf?ID=3825
======
sethbannon
Their disagreement can be viewed through the lens of how they view Twitter.
Thiel sees it as "we wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters" (a
Founders Fund motto). He thinks it's an unimpressive, incremental advancement.
Andreessen, however, views it as "instant global public messaging for free".
In other words, fundamentally transformative.

The entire video is well worth a watch, but that's it in a nutshell.

[edit: fixed typo]

~~~
david927
It's not nearly that simple. The question is not just are we innovating here
and there, but are we gaining productivity (and therefore building wealth)?

Marc mentions GNP growth but that's a horrible number to gauge on. Peter
brings up mean household income and working hours, which are much better
indicators -- and they indicate we're going nowhere.

You say Twitter is "fundamentally transformative". But I don't see the wealth
Twitter has created. And if Twitter was gone tomorrow, would anyone really
notice?

~~~
ippisl
I bet that if you looked at household income and working hours and worker
conditions at the beginning of the industrial revolution you wouldn't see
great improvement. You've seen that only after the workers movement gotten
worker rights.

That's to say that those metrics are wrong to measure technological
advancement per se. But of course what's important is standards of living.

~~~
david927
Peter isn't the only one saying this. Even the eminent Alan Kay raises the
point:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-
in...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-inventions-
in-computing-since-1980)

~~~
ippisl
First even Thiel agrees there isn't lack of innovation in computing.

Alan Kay asks about big ideas, not about innovation. I'm pretty sure that if
you look at research papers you'll find amazing ideas that within a 5/10/30
years time will be important(but we can't tell, not until we worked hard to
make them work).

Just of the top of my head, there are many potential amazing ideas: look at
literature based discovery, alan kay's project that tries to build full os +
apps in less than 20KLOC, "naked objects" and meredith patterson's work on
parsing and security[1].

[1]<http://www.securitytube.net/video/7251>

~~~
david927
I guess we're disagreeing with what is meant by innovation. For me it means
big ideas. Better tires on cars is innovation but it's not satisfying to me. I
think Thiel also means big ideas -- hence the 140 character quote.

I like your enthusiasm and your list is fantastic. I haven't seen Meredith
Patterson's stuff. It looks interesting. But we were also "on the cusp" of
curing cancer in the 70's.

This is personal, I guess. I've spent an inordinate time on deep research and
I've done it on my own. It's frustrating to watch while things like the
Kickstarter for T-shirts get drowned in financing while I count pennies.

I'll try to be more optimistic but there's nothing wrong with saying, "Let's
stop chasing money and start chasing something more. Something bigger.
Something better."

------
henryl
The truth is they are both right. Technology is accelerating but it is also
changing directionally. It is no longer accelerating along a physical axis but
instead along a virtual one. What Peter Thiel doesn't see is that the virtual
curve will be even more transformative than the physical one. Physical
technology has had hundreds of thousands of years to evolve but virtual
technology will obsolete it in just a few decades. How? The answer starts out
looking a little like Angry Birds but probably ends up more like the Holodeck.

The issue of measurement IS important. The problem with all of Peter Thiel's
metrics is that they are inherently indicators of external activity. The
triumph of the virtual curve reveals itself in the only metric that really
matters: time.

All forms of technology have the same purpose: to optimize the utility
obtained during a finite lifespan. Some forms of technology increase the
utility per unit time, others simply increase the units of time we have left.
Therefore, more and more time spent in virtual space is an indication that
virtual technology is out competing the substitutes provided by physical
technology. As we go higher up the virtual curve and technology becomes more
advanced at fulfilling our emotional and psychological needs by moving bits
instead of atoms, eventually physical progress will slow to baseline:
literally life support (maybe with gamified life extension projects taking
place in virtual land).

Alas, the last technology invented by man will not be the singularity, it will
be near perfect virtual reality; closer to Angry Birds than Skynet.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
_Therefore, more and more time spent in virtual space is an indication that
virtual technology is out competing the substitutes provided by physical
technology._

I am slamming my head against my desk this is _just that dumb_.

Managing to subvert people's attention spans and dopamine systems to keep them
clicking on the orange-red envelope and clicking to the next page does not
mean you've actually done anything good for them. It just means you're
consuming their attention until they _actually leave the site_ and walk away
with that empty feeling of having outright wasted several whole hours of their
day.

 _Alas, the last technology invented by man will not be the singularity, it
will be near perfect virtual reality; closer to Angry Birds than Skynet._

Why? A perfect video game is still _just_ a video game.

~~~
henryl
Please explain why you think reality is inherently better than a virtual
reality. edit: By the way, I get the sense that you think this is a grim
future. I do too, but I think this is irrational.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
_Please explain why you think reality is inherently better than a virtual
reality._

Mostly because of an entire youth's raising and training designed to not only
enable me to cope with things that don't go away when I stop believing in
them, but a whole lot of built-up pride and enjoyment at being able to force
reality into my desired shape despite itself.

 _edit: By the way, I get the sense that you think this is a grim future. I do
too, but I think this is irrational._

Angry Birds? That _is_ grim. In fact, any Matrix-y future based on a video
game is grim. Video games are designed to provide some entertainment for real
people who are taking a break. Or, sometimes, you get _World of Warcraft_ and
the game is just designed to keep you paying and playing.

To _replace most of life_ , you need to move away in the solution space, to
something that's either far _more_ realistic (the Matrix), or something far
_less_ realistic, enough to be a fun way to spend all your time.

It's like car-culture: it caters to precise fulfillment of individual
preferences, probably in a market structure, at the cost of shared communal
life and space people actually enjoy.

Actually, for the latter to work I think you'd have to raise a whole new
generation of people to whom life without significant external challenges or
struggles would be as natural as YOLO and SWAG and neo-feudalism are to
Generation Z. Wow, I think I've found what I'm going to lecture children about
when I'm elderly. You kids these days and your completely self-designed
lifestyles!

------
Killah911
I was there, probably one of the best sessions at the event. I especially
liked the part about building a very strong roof if flying cars come to
fruition.

~~~
GhotiFish
ha!

Ok, sounds like it's worth a look.

------
patrickk
Quote from Peter Thiel starting around 39:10 in the video:

" _Mean wages have been stagnant (not median). It’s not an income an
inequality issue. Mean wages went up 350% in the US after inflation from 1933
and 1973. [They] went up 22% from 1973 to 2013. Median wages were flat, so
it’s become more unequal. Even if you had redistributed everything, it’s gone
up only 22%._ "

I feel this is an overly US-centric view of humanities progress. Globalisation
produces winners and losers in the short term, and even though manufacturing
jobs are being destroyed in the US, millions of people are being lifted out of
poverty in China and other low cost developing nations.

If you are using the argument that stagnant wages in one part of the world
means human civilisation is not progressing technologically, does that
argument stand up if you look at global living standards?

There was an interesting argument (unfortunately I can't recall where I heard
it) that put forward the idea that World War II was like a massive subsidy
from the US Air Force to the US manufacturing sector. The US Air Force
destroyed many of the industrial cities of America's global manufacturing
competitors (mainly Germany and Japan) and other major European nations were
destroyed also and were bailed out with the Marshall Plan.

All this meant that for decades, the US manufacturing sector had it
artificially good because of greatly reduced global competition, as factories
and other manufacturing infrastructure had to be totally rebuilt in the other
big industrial nations, which took decades. This was great news for US car
companies (and other manufacturers) in the decades after the war, who could
churn out (relatively) unreliable and fuel inefficient vehicles, which were
bought in huge numbers as they were the best available. In the 1970s, the
combination of the oil shocks and encroaching competition from Japanese car
makers, who innovated with reliable, fuel efficient and affordable vehicles,
meant that the good times were over.

Tl;dr using US wages from 1933-1973, and 1973-today is the wrong metric to
measure human civilisations technological progress, for a variety of reasons.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
[http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/19/the-europe-in-
ru...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/19/the-europe-in-rubble-
excuse/)

------
mindcrime
Definitely worth a watch. Interestingly, they agreed on quite a bit. The one
thing I was struck by, was the extent to which they agreed that government
regulation was an inhibitor of innovation. Actually, I expected that from
Thiel, since he's well known as a libertarian, but I wasn't sure that pmarca
would share that viewpoint. But they both came down pretty hard on government
in that regard.

I think both agreed that energy is of critical importance as well, and that
the nature of the energy markets have had a big impact on shaping progress in
other areas.

Also, I think Peter Thiel made a fairly interesting point about the connection
between our imagination (as a culture) and Hollywood's portrayal of
technology. It _is_ a little odd that some of the most well-known and popular
movies with a large technological element are the ones where the machines are
coming to kill us. I'm sitting here right now trying to think up some good
counter-examples, and am coming up fairly blank so far...

Something else that Peter Thiel mentioned at least twice was the phrase "risk
averse". I think that's a pretty important point... as a society, have we
become so risk averse that we aren't willing to gamble on the big
breakthroughs anymore? Are we content to just sit back and wait and hope for a
steady stream of incremental, sustaining innovations? I think he might be onto
something with that.

Edit: Something that neither Thiel nor Andressen mentioned, that I think is
relevant to this discussion, is the recent re-emergence of the hobbyist / DIY
/ amateur scientist / solo hacker/builder movement. Hackerspaces, cheap
embedded / embeddable computers, Arduino, Beagleboard, rPi, 3D printing, cheap
DIY CNC milling machines, etc, are enabling thousands or millions of people to
take a stab at building things they never could have tried to build before.
And go visit the recent HN thread on "Hardware startups" and the CDixon
post... looking at what an entrepreneur can do now, in terms of having a
physical product built at scale with a much smaller capital investment than in
the past... that's got to encourage some new companies to form, and some
people to start working on ideas and dreams they've been stewing no, no? And
hardware devices aside, cheap computers, cheap Internet access, Open Source
software, etc., are making it so much easier for people to explore their
software and virtual ideas as well.

But, then we'd be back to Peter's point that "we got 140 chars". So, is it
lack of imagination, or something else, that's keeping us from getting
radical, disruptive breakthroughs? Or are they out there, on the cusp, just...
about... to... happen.

~~~
ehsanu1
The Iron Man movies might be one example, glorifying a tech genius who was
able to turn his tech skills around from evil to good. This may be more of a
throwback from the comic super hero's origins though, rather than being an
indicator of our modern imaginations.

------
aswanson
One way to I've been thinking about technology is how easily the outcome of a
war between our current year and a prior year in the same country would turn
out. For instance, could the U.S. of 2013 easily defeat the U.S. of 1993. I
know for a fact that the U.S of 1960 would make short work of the U.S. of
1940. I think the U.S. of 1973 would give the U.S. of 1993 much more of a
problem, however.

------
marcamillion
Wow....Just the first few minutes alone is like a nerdgasm.

I love the way these guys think and express themselves.

------
chx
Transcript please.

~~~
Killah911
Synopsis: Peter making the argument that innovation is decelerating and the
returns from tech innovations are minor compared to tech innovations in the
past. Marc arguing that while some innovations may appear trivial but it is
too early to judge for sure (based on history other innovations which we now
consider ground breaking were at their times often written off as a fad) &
that innovations aren't actually slowing down.

Fun bits about flying cars & how early automobiles required taking a mechanic
with you wherever you go. Also interesting comment about Cisco, IBM & maybe MS
being part of the technology rust belt. Neither are very fond of NYT.

------
jacoblyles
Good discussion of energy technology and the electric grid a little after
40:00

Charter Cities and regulatory competition get a mention around 56:00,
something that I am very excited about.

~~~
cinquemb
Agreed, and when they started to talk about lack of the incumbent institutions
that are pressuring regulation in developing countries it made me think about
how the concept of the electrical grid is obsolete and highly cost inefficient
in places with lack of infrastructure and are being solved by tech in a way
that would be over regulated(or not allowed) in the united states; Probably
because when we as culture think of electricity, we have an existing
infrastructure (and the government sponsored monopolies on such) to think of
unlike in developing countries.

------
spitx
I loathe the fact that Thiel's arguments do not get enough purchase even
within the technology circles.

Argument 1

The fact - and it is very much a fact - that, off late, technology hasn't
progressed very much at all.

Argument 2

And that our scowl-faced culture, that disparages everything technological --
in favor of products of some glorious bygone era where everything that would
be ever needed for human purposes has already been conceived, crafted and
fabricated -- reinforces this notion in every aspect of our lives.

This is the part I hate most about our culture - the utterly stupid, moribund
romanticism associated with every stupid thing ever invented -- however ill-
suited it is to serve a purpose in this age -- is somehow worthy of our
admiration solely because it is antediluvian.

Not that it is efficient or infinitely better than any candidate that has
since come along to replace it (and there are a few examples of such nature.
Very few indeed. Eg: the drinking straw or the common t-shirt).

But purely because it served our forefathers well and therefore it is somehow
worthy of continued use.

Hollywood unabashedly continues to perpetuate these sickening notions to no
end.

Edit: Rewritten for purposes of clarity.

~~~
groby_b
Right. I just had an article cross my stream about completely thought-
controlled hand prosthetics that can actually grasp things and give feedback
on pressure. Clearly not a tech advancement.

Genetic testing for $99. Clearly just incremental, because hey, last year it
was $199. Never mind the fact that it wasn't even imaginable 20 years ago.

Private space shipment at a price/weight that's rapidly decreasing way below
what we ever had.

Rapid acceleration of solar technology.

And the list goes on and on. Of _course_ they're all incremental - that's how
science and technology work. Einstein's theory of relativity didn't come out
of nowhere, but built on predecessors. The transistor built on long research
in solid state physics, Shockley didn't just pull it out of his pocket.

And if we go to the trope of "but they were paradigm shifts" - so is "big
data". So is probabilistic AI. So is molecular engineering.

~~~
cinquemb
Funny because Thiel would remark along the lines of despite those very valid
technical advancements (that he himself is invested in), most people in the
United States (or developed world) are not even in the context of
understanding what value most of the things you listed will be to them.

What is the economic value of a thought controlled hand prosthetics to an
illusioned college student who just finished watching Minority Report and
iRobot who is "able-bodied"(for lack of a better term) and who will probably
never use it (maybe they will use it in some form of masturbatory tool) though
claim to sympathize with those who do yet knowing nothing of them personally
and their experiences?

What is the economic value of private space shipment for someone who will
probably never receive any financial gain of space travel proportional to the
few who do, when working at [insert-mega-corp] CEO makes 1k times the avg
employee (that their laying of in increasing numbers) they hope to work at
after graduating with 100k in debt for 30k/y designing logos for a brand with
sales down y/y for 5 years?

What is the economic value of solar technology to most americans whose idea of
electricity is flipping a switch that have no idea about the publicly
subsidized/poorly maintained aged infrastructure, and think solar panels are
fancy tech that is not needed?

And the list goes on.

Paradigm shifts or not in tech have been effectively moot when the perception
(and the benefit in peoples immediately lives) seem to be out of sight
(economists might see this as spending more money but getting less and less
returns as time progresses). When they are in sight, you bet it will come in
the form of drone packed action thriller with big data crunching molecularly
engineered AI genetically testing people using 23andMe api to exterminate
those with disease risks higher than the overall population coming down from
ISS with Space X's grasshopper drone edition, with the video game to follow
then preceding the cartoon equivalent for childhood consumption.

I bet the teen in Fez, Morroco who didn't have electricity for most of their
life and has to hang around tourist bars to watch his favorite team play to go
back home to his "house" made of corrugated aluminum roofing(in some places)
with walls at least a thousand years old [<http://i.imgur.com/1zzmoLa.jpg>]
outfitted with satellite tv installed by the state and only on few hours of
the day (the mother would be watching her favorite american show of course)
due to power contraints, will probably appreciate that cheep chinese solar
panel installed by EWB more than either of us (which Thiel alludes to in this
talk) after never having stable electricity [my personal experience after
living there for some time].

I sure know the youth in Spain and Greece sure do appreciate this tech and are
using it for their economic benefit as you can tell from their quality of
life.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
To be wittier about it: "The future is already here — it's just not very
evenly distributed."

