I am 44 and visit the Bay Area from time to time. I have the same feeling on various levels.
Anything older than two years has disappeared into a vortex. I mean I remember when the peninsula was the center of the tech industry - I mean Facebook came out of Palo Alto in 2004, it wasn't that long ago. Now the peninsula is the home of Oracle, Intel, Cisco, and other dinosaurs founded between the 1960s and 1980s, and now Facebook is considered a dinosaur next to upstarts like Snapchat.
People travel from Market Street to their startup office. Everyone has a Macbook. Everything is done on Slack. Food is delivered to the communal tables at 1 PM via one of the dozens of online services that exist that make startup life simpler. If your laptop is HP, if you actually send e-mails from time to time, if you still use IRC and Freenode (or heaven forbid, EFnet) - dinosaur.
I've been on the Internet since the 1980s. One reason for lacking techno-utopianism is I see what has happened. I see how Verizon/AT&T the monopolies seized control of what I guess they always controlled on some level. I see how they destroyed Usenet. I see the NSA monitoring what Americans are doing 24/7/365, and storing it forever in a Utah data center they are still building. I see intelligent conversations between academics fade away for alt-right 4chan "raids". There was always some dull-headed and anarchic forces on the net but now they have taken over. I see the collaboration and massive amount of free man-hours given to build the net being seized and expropriated by large corporations. I see people burned out with 80/90 hour week startup death marches, then get burned on options for Zynga/Skype option clawbacks, then have their marriages and families and lives fall apart - 40/50 something unemployable burnouts with broken families. While the VCs and bigcorp majority stockholders make out like bandits.
It is one reason experienced people are shunted aside - it is easier to sucker some kid in their 20s to throw a decade away slaving for peanuts for super angels, VCs and their LPs. All the while having the founders talking about the importance of company culture, as if you're in some cult - which on some level - you are.
> If your laptop is HP, if you actually send e-mails from time to time, if you still use IRC and Freenode (or heaven forbid, EFnet) - dinosaur.
I work at a FAANG company and while most people use mac, email is still without competition and irc is still somewhat used but on the decline since our company is so big we now have our own in house tool that works better.
Anything older than two years has disappeared into a vortex. I mean I remember when the peninsula was the center of the tech industry - I mean Facebook came out of Palo Alto in 2004, it wasn't that long ago. Now the peninsula is the home of Oracle, Intel, Cisco, and other dinosaurs founded between the 1960s and 1980s, and now Facebook is considered a dinosaur next to upstarts like Snapchat.
People travel from Market Street to their startup office. Everyone has a Macbook. Everything is done on Slack. Food is delivered to the communal tables at 1 PM via one of the dozens of online services that exist that make startup life simpler. If your laptop is HP, if you actually send e-mails from time to time, if you still use IRC and Freenode (or heaven forbid, EFnet) - dinosaur.
I've been on the Internet since the 1980s. One reason for lacking techno-utopianism is I see what has happened. I see how Verizon/AT&T the monopolies seized control of what I guess they always controlled on some level. I see how they destroyed Usenet. I see the NSA monitoring what Americans are doing 24/7/365, and storing it forever in a Utah data center they are still building. I see intelligent conversations between academics fade away for alt-right 4chan "raids". There was always some dull-headed and anarchic forces on the net but now they have taken over. I see the collaboration and massive amount of free man-hours given to build the net being seized and expropriated by large corporations. I see people burned out with 80/90 hour week startup death marches, then get burned on options for Zynga/Skype option clawbacks, then have their marriages and families and lives fall apart - 40/50 something unemployable burnouts with broken families. While the VCs and bigcorp majority stockholders make out like bandits.
It is one reason experienced people are shunted aside - it is easier to sucker some kid in their 20s to throw a decade away slaving for peanuts for super angels, VCs and their LPs. All the while having the founders talking about the importance of company culture, as if you're in some cult - which on some level - you are.