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14 votes
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The costs of not investing in American public infrastructure, research, and education
29 votes -
Are we stuck on a innovation plateau - and did startups burn through fifteen years of venture capital with nothing to show for?
The theses I would like to discuss goes as follows (and I'm paraphrasing): during the last 15 years, low interest rates made billions of dollars easily available to startups. Unfortunately, this...
The theses I would like to discuss goes as follows (and I'm paraphrasing): during the last 15 years, low interest rates made billions of dollars easily available to startups. Unfortunately, this huge influx of venture capital has led to no perceivable innovation.
Put cynically, the innovation startups have brought us across the last 15 years can be summarized as (paraphrasing again):
- An illegal hotel chain destroying our cities
- An illegal taxi company exploiting the poor
- Fake money for criminals
- A plagiarism machine/fancy auto-complete
Everything else is either derivative or has failed.
I personally think spaceX has made phenomenal progress and would have probably failed somewhere along the way without cheap loans. There's also some biotech startups (like the mRNA vaccines that won the race to market during covid) doing great things, but often that's just the fruits of 20 years of research coming to fruition.
Every other recent innovation I can think of came from a big player that would have invested in the tech regardless, and almost all of it is "just" incremental improvements on several decades old ideas (I know, that's what progress looks like most of the time).
What do you think? Do you have any counterexamples? Can you think of any big tech disruptions after quantitative easing made money almost free in 2008?
And if you, like me, feel like we're stuck on a plateau - why do you think that is?
83 votes -
Why Sweden is (still) betting on the metaverse – we chatted to the experts on why Swedes are so keen on virtual worlds
3 votes -
The nonmachinables
3 votes -
Power struggle: The most quietly innovative thing that emerged from the latter half of the 1990s was the on-battery power meter. It was the subject of a complex patent battle.
9 votes -
Against scale: Provocations and resistances to scale thinking
3 votes -
Don Norman: Technology first, needs last
5 votes -
The real trouble with Silicon Valley: The toxicity of the web is peanuts compared with Big Tech’s failure to remake the physical world
9 votes -
Rock climbing and the economics of innovation
8 votes -
Stories of twenty-five people who are racing to save us
14 votes -
Eleven technologies that didn't survive into the sci-fi future
2 votes -
The 100 greatest innovations of 2018
6 votes -
Repair is as important as innovation: Maintenance lacks the glamour of innovation—and is harder to measure
11 votes