"And yet at the same time it is a city notoriously plagued by poverty, crime, and political gridlock, all of which, like all problems, can be solved by the application of sufficient quantities of VC-funded smartphone apps and responsive websites built on Node.js and MongoDB."
Please tell me this is not serious...
"Silicon Valley has already shown this to be true with its cornucopia of revolutionary, world-transforming companies such as Instagram, Snapchat, Topsy, QuizUp, and Vine (to say nothing of Color.)"
The part about calling it Cyberia was hilarious. I still can't stop laughing.
What I don't understand is why people think technolibertarianism is the solution to all our problems. Do people really think that if every single person in the US was a programmer, we would all be better off? Or that all of the world's problems can be solved with engineering?
Long answer: Not silicon valley per se, but the tech industry as a whole makes our technological progress look "easy". You know it isn't easy, I know it isn't easy, almost everyone here on HN knows "it isn't easy". Just as we all love to do to complexity here, society as a whole abstracts the hard part away, and hands over their hard earned money to get the tech without having to see nor do that hard work.
Technology can, of course, make markets more efficient, connect suppliers and consumers, connect us all. What it can't do is solve the hardest problems. Because those problems are people problems, not tech problems.
TL;DR The hardest problems aren't engineering problems. They're people/political problems.
"And yet at the same time it is a city notoriously plagued by poverty, crime, and political gridlock, all of which, like all problems, can be solved by the application of sufficient quantities of VC-funded smartphone apps and responsive websites built on Node.js and MongoDB."
When I read this line I thought the guy was some completely deluded silicon valley VC/tech junkie who'd never left the area to see the real world.. Took me a bit longer to realize the fairly decent satire.
The sad thing is that there really are a lot of people in tech who think like this article in some respects. They think that if you just through enough cool tech and apps at people anywhere, they'll just magically stop being the sometimes ignorant, deeply cruel or criminally minded humans they are.
Like toomuchtodo said, most of the serious problems are people problems.
That said though, I think technology can be used to shape peoples incentives and choices so that even if we're partly broken as a species, changing needs and options made by technology will make us do things that lead to more peace and cooperation. Pretty basic idea, sort of like how industrialized agriculture made people stop having wars over food. (mostly)
Please tell me this is not serious...
"Silicon Valley has already shown this to be true with its cornucopia of revolutionary, world-transforming companies such as Instagram, Snapchat, Topsy, QuizUp, and Vine (to say nothing of Color.)"
Okay, good. Not serious.