> I'm getting more and more convinced that tech people are living in a dangerous bubble
You don't need the rest of this sentence. They are. Almost everyone I talk to in the Valley of Silicon speaks of broad trends in... I mean, anything really, in how people use technology, in what people need cars for, in what people eat, in what goods typically cost, genuinely any topic of sufficient breadth that escapes the technology itself, as though they have not been on planet earth since roughly 2009. It is astonishing how well insulated from common concerns tech workers are, which is probably how we got shit like Juicero, an incredibly overbuilt, over-spec, ludicrously designed wifi-connected machine to squeeze a fucking bag. And it explains a bunch of their other incredibly stupid ideas, like e-scooters.
This is why, I am sorry, but I simply do not put a lot of stock (literally, and metaphorically) into the opinions of SV's elites. That's like, a bubble in a damn bubble. That's a bubbled subset of people who haven't had a normal experience of being human for who knows how long, inside a bubble of people who largely do not share the same reality as me.
Bringing it back to what I was replying to: you are absolutely right about the common folk's experience with AI. It's an annoying thing being shoved into tons of products they use, that seemingly no one asked for, that doesn't work. And it's a massive, 400 foot tall neon sign, telling them that big tech doesn't give a fuck about them, what they want, or anything else besides sign up for the subscription dumbass.
I'm mostly with you but "other incredibly stupid ideas, like e-scooters" just sounds like a personal vendetta to me. I don't see anything SV specific about e-scooters, not is it a dangerous bubble or stupid to use compact electric powered modes of transport in a dense area.
Couldn’t one make the argument that EVERYONE is in a bubble of sorts?
I (one of the SV tech workers you mention) was recently in rural Georgia for a cousin’s wedding, where I was shocked to learn that many people in the area considered the previous presidential election to have been stolen. I wanted to scream “you need to get out of your bubble!”
And I would argue, more importantly, it has way too little understanding for the influence it wants to have. SV companies want to disrupt every industry, irrespective of if the inefficiencies present are down to organizational inertia on the part of the market holders, or whether those inefficiencies are down to a myriad of other reasons we might want to do any given thing a little slower and more carefully than we otherwise might. Like, for example, background checks for taxi drivers before we give them the job of transporting strangers, alone, with zero oversight. That's not to say the taxi industry prior to Uber was saintly, far fucking from it. But it had a baseline of safety that went along with the corrupt incentive structures present in many places, that Uber completely failed to replicate and we had to re-learn the lessons we had already learned, which has cost a non-zero amount of lives.
You don't need the rest of this sentence. They are. Almost everyone I talk to in the Valley of Silicon speaks of broad trends in... I mean, anything really, in how people use technology, in what people need cars for, in what people eat, in what goods typically cost, genuinely any topic of sufficient breadth that escapes the technology itself, as though they have not been on planet earth since roughly 2009. It is astonishing how well insulated from common concerns tech workers are, which is probably how we got shit like Juicero, an incredibly overbuilt, over-spec, ludicrously designed wifi-connected machine to squeeze a fucking bag. And it explains a bunch of their other incredibly stupid ideas, like e-scooters.
This is why, I am sorry, but I simply do not put a lot of stock (literally, and metaphorically) into the opinions of SV's elites. That's like, a bubble in a damn bubble. That's a bubbled subset of people who haven't had a normal experience of being human for who knows how long, inside a bubble of people who largely do not share the same reality as me.
Bringing it back to what I was replying to: you are absolutely right about the common folk's experience with AI. It's an annoying thing being shoved into tons of products they use, that seemingly no one asked for, that doesn't work. And it's a massive, 400 foot tall neon sign, telling them that big tech doesn't give a fuck about them, what they want, or anything else besides sign up for the subscription dumbass.