I think the author misses how weird the world already is. The broad point, that software is becoming more important culturally, and software can become culturally important faster and for less justification, is I think probably true. But I am not convinced that software is more weird than most people.
Long before software people drew lines in the sand that formed pictures only visible from airplanes which did not exist. Stuff is weird, get used to it.
When I started reading this article I found myself a bit annoyed. The author was complaining and pointing out the fact that some tech companies do some crazy/inane stuff, while ignoring all of the positive things that comes out of tech. Plus, even the crazy/inane stuff can end up having positive impact or side effects!
At the end of the article, however, I was pleased to find that the author came to the same conclusion. Yes, tech can be weird, and it seems especially so to those outside of tech, but I strongly believe that in the long run all of this experimentation will be a good thing.
I remember hearing similar ridiculous things before the last software bubble burst. Huge valuations, investments in websites that do nothing, the success of gimmicky zany stuff like "sell 1 million single pixel ads!".
The author seems to take at face value that the ridiculousness is somehow grounded on something. When valuations for things like an app that does nothing except send 'Yo' compares favorably with a company like SpaceX, I have to wonder whether, really, we're in another bubble and in for another burst.
I keep thinking that, too. But this time, most of the silly stuff is profitable. In the first dot-com boom, companies went public long before they were profitable. (I had a program to track that, Downside's Deathwatch: http://www.downside.com/deathwatch.html). There are lots of failures, but they fail small, with YCombinator-sized funding. We're not seeing failures the size of Webvan or Excite@Home this time around.
The first dot-com collapse was spectacular. Empty streets in San Jose and San Francisco. Huge, empty office complexes. Excite@Home built a huge headquarters facility at the end of Seaport Drive in Redwood City, bigger than Facebook or Oracle. It was vacant for years. About 40% of the twentysomethings in SF left town. The excess furniture ended up at Consolidated Office Outfitters in San Jose, which had a warehouse covering an entire city block full of partitions, desks, and chairs. The computers went to Weird Stuff Warehouse in Sunnyvale, where you can get all the parts for a previous-generation data center cheaply.
That doesn't seem to be happening this time. Most of the startups can cover their operating costs. Many are overvalued, though, because their future growth may not be that large.
Pot. kettle. black - 'Tech Crunch' (stupid name) is the poster child for boosting sketchy tech that has more to do with financial shell games to pump and dump products and services than advancing tech for the good of mankind.
This was a good, funny article but there are thousands going bust or running their credit cards to the max trying to create new firms which is the darker side of all this...
The Valley tech funding circus is beyond bizarre...
A lot of the consumer stuff people buy is pretty silly or of minute importance, and i'm sure it was also considered silly in the past. And yet, it forms a pretty large industry.
When the author ran off the names of those NSA projects (horsewrap, iceblock, micefur...) for some reason the REM song "it's the end of the world as we know it" popped into my head.
I think there was a period of time when the military used a random word generator for operations. Whether or not this is a figment of my imagination, I think it would not be a bad idea for the NSA or any organization with a constant churn of operations that need names.
[+] [-] InfiniteRand|11 years ago|reply
Long before software people drew lines in the sand that formed pictures only visible from airplanes which did not exist. Stuff is weird, get used to it.
[+] [-] zek|11 years ago|reply
At the end of the article, however, I was pleased to find that the author came to the same conclusion. Yes, tech can be weird, and it seems especially so to those outside of tech, but I strongly believe that in the long run all of this experimentation will be a good thing.
[+] [-] xnull2guest|11 years ago|reply
The author seems to take at face value that the ridiculousness is somehow grounded on something. When valuations for things like an app that does nothing except send 'Yo' compares favorably with a company like SpaceX, I have to wonder whether, really, we're in another bubble and in for another burst.
[+] [-] Animats|11 years ago|reply
The first dot-com collapse was spectacular. Empty streets in San Jose and San Francisco. Huge, empty office complexes. Excite@Home built a huge headquarters facility at the end of Seaport Drive in Redwood City, bigger than Facebook or Oracle. It was vacant for years. About 40% of the twentysomethings in SF left town. The excess furniture ended up at Consolidated Office Outfitters in San Jose, which had a warehouse covering an entire city block full of partitions, desks, and chairs. The computers went to Weird Stuff Warehouse in Sunnyvale, where you can get all the parts for a previous-generation data center cheaply.
That doesn't seem to be happening this time. Most of the startups can cover their operating costs. Many are overvalued, though, because their future growth may not be that large.
[+] [-] no_future|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] olivermarks|11 years ago|reply
This was a good, funny article but there are thousands going bust or running their credit cards to the max trying to create new firms which is the darker side of all this...
The Valley tech funding circus is beyond bizarre...
[+] [-] pavel_lishin|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Apocryphon|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Roboprog|11 years ago|reply
Not that I'm jealous, or anything...
[+] [-] anonymousab|11 years ago|reply
On a side not, that page/article/site is a work of art in* demonstrating painful mobile design.
[+] [-] minthd|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] squozzer|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] InfiniteRand|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Roboprog|11 years ago|reply