Does the Silicon Valley Economy Drive a Luxury Bus?
06/12/2008, 2 months 1 week ago
Steven Hodson has an excellent post today that talks about the financial divide in technology, something that a lot of the Web 2.0 crowd forgets is even there.
Posts pop up from time to time discussion the Web 2.0 bubble, but it's really a word with a double meaning. One is the reference to the false economy of inflated valuations of companies that don't even have a black pen in their accounting departments, but the other meaning that Hodson refers to is the insulated bubble that protects the Web 2.0 crowd from the realities of the rest of the world.
Silicon Valley has long been driving the bus when it comes to technology. Those of us who live outside the Valley talk about it every once in a while, but are usually stuffed down. Until this year, I had never even been to San Francisco, and it was shocking to me. Not the amazing amount of tech there (virtually every person had a Crackberry or iPhone, texting away), but what appeared to be a vacuum where the middle class should be. You'd see high-end cars parked next to shopping carts belonging to a homeless person, and iPhone owners stepping over people sleeping on the street as they texted. Whether appearances are true or not, the insane number of the latest and greatest gadgets and late model cars was so evident that I wanted to hide my poor little RAZR.
There are entrepreneurs who've never worked for "The Man" building apps for people who can't imagine not working two jobs. They are launching location apps and mobile apps when a lot of people don't have a device to run them on. And while the Valley elite debate whether or not to upgrade last year's $400 phone for this year's model, there are people hoping their hard drive holds out until a tax stimulus comes.
There are many of us who live in a totally different existence. My recent ruminations over the iPhone issue were because this is a phone my husband and I were only going to be able to buy with a gift certificate he won in a contest, and the monthly difference in plans is a straw on a camel already straining. My husband currently has a RAZR that's four years old. Mine is newer, since I was forced to replace my original that my kids dumped in a cup of water. A month's blogging pay went toward that replacement. I don't have the luxury of blogger burnout, because blogging pays the bills, and if I take a mental health break, something's not getting paid. I saved months of pay to afford my MacBook Pro, and it's going to have to last a good number of years for the investment.
When people complain about a Web 2.0 app or service, the response is often "build it yourself." The problem is that most of us in the world can't afford to start up a company, because the jobs that pay the bills take up too much time. There's a luxury in having enough money put away that you can start a company, and a luxury in being able to start one while you keep a day job that doesn't take up too much time and energy on top of family.
I don't pretend to understand the Valley culture or economy. My visit there was less like being in a different city than a different planet, and I've assumed that my reaction was that of a country bumpkin going to the big city of tech. But Steven Hodson is a reminder that I'm not the country bumpkin, and maybe I'm just Jane Average, part of a population that not everyone is thinking about as they are designing apps and anointing them something everyone needs or wants.
Man, its like you read my mind. I said much the same thing as a comment to Steven. When I visited S.F. last year on my honeymoon, it was indeed like being a tourist on a different planet! It was a beautiful planet with cool breezes and beautiful people, but they didn’t behave like the rest of the world, that is for sure!
Well.. until my wife and I were in the rental car heading toward Sonoma and took a wrong turn into San Pablo (I think).. anyway, it was kinda scary.
nice post ma’am .. very nice
Nice post Svetlana,
SF is an “interesting” place to say the least. The reality or perception of it is definitely messed up but I personally always justify it with one simple phrase - it’s is California…
I’ve been to San Francisco/Silicon Valley a few times and wasn’t impressed. When it comes to the technology crowd, there are far more people living on VC subsidies than on cold hard cash and there are far too many posers who spend their disposable income on the latest gadgets and who think that a leased Audi makes them cool.
In reality most of Silicon Valley is as bankrupt as the rest of America even if its population doesn’t yet recognize it.
For some real perspective take a trip to a city like Dubai, Abu Dhabi or Doha. Silicon Valley folk build software applications…these people build cities out of the desert.
Funny timing, I came across this post from a photographer/new media & technology commentor based out of San Francisco just tonight after reading your comments. Maybe not everyone in San Francisco ignores the homeless…
@Alex, thank you very much for the comment but I would not want to steal Cyndy’s fame here (I just guess you arrived here from Twitter and decided I was supposed to be the author).
@M. Jacbobs: In fact, there’s no real need to visit Dubai or other very luxury places to actually see the contrast. Living in Russia, I often have to be in Moscow and this is definitely the one city in the world where people just have a burning desire to show their wealth everywhere - I have never seen such beautiful cars, shoes, or expensive designer clothes anywhere else, including California. But having been to California with Cyndy in April for the first time myself, I fully support her in the fact that the number of gadgets (and expensive ones, at that) is absolutely incredible over there. And I could never decide what was more amazing to me - the number of gadgets or the number of homeless people - in fact, in Moscow we at least managed to take care of the homeless and the money rarely mix with ugly display of poverty.
Sometimes those building software in the valley forget that that nice hockey stick curve on their proposed traffic graph results when people making average incomes start using the service.
It is a very easy trap to fall into (from personal experience) and I live on the opposite coast where a quick ride on the New York subway or the Boston T is all you need to remind you who your audience is. I cannot even begin to imagine the blinders that come into play when you live in San Jose (hey, that rhymed!)
Great post.
Nice post, Cyndy.
@J. Phil The thing that was so startling wasn’t just the homeless issue for me, since I think SFO’s problem still isn’t as bad as Toronto’s from what I saw, but the juxtaposition of mad money next to it was incomprehensible. And the gadgets… I called my husband at one point and said “You know how we couldn’t believe the iPhone sales figures? I do now. 99% of them are in this city.”
@Steven Thank you, sir. You can see why it was just too large to leave as a comment on your post.
@Alex I’ll take the thanks.
Every time I try to use the “Well, it’s California” I’m told I have an East Coast prejudice, which I probably do, but it was like I was on a whole different planet.
@M Jacbobs I think you are right in the respect that some of the money out there is Monopoly money, but it’s money nonetheless.
@Svetlana I’m always interested in how a city “takes care” of a homeless issue. Many of the proposals here all have to do with moving people, but not dealing with the underlying issues.
@A Strange Web Thank you! I have such a different perspective, living in a city that was a booming manufacturing town at one point and is now struggling to reinvent itself. It may be one of the reasons why my viewpoint is so often diametrically opposed to the rest of the early adopter crowd; I live in a much different culture where many of this “game changer” apps would serve no practical purpose.
@ Leslie Thank you.
Oops! @latoga Sorry! Didn’t mean to forget you in my responses! I definitely don’t think that everyone ignores the homeless; in fact, most of the people I saw there sleeping on the street had the same or similar blankets, so I assume there is some sort of initiative in play there. It’s the contrast of wealth and poverty that I’m talking about, and the strange view that some have in chasing the latest and greatest shiny object when they are daily confronted with that poverty. I struggle with that issue daily when deciding what we need versus what we want, and I don’t have that constant reminder in my face of how very lucky I am.
Cyndy, actually we in Russia tend to focus less on moving the homeless people because this definitely does not help - moving them from the capital will simply bring them to other towns around the country. Instead we here try to involve the homeless people more in the workforce - they are offered jobs (like cleaning the streets) that are accompanied with some accommodation. Moreover, here if you want to actually work as a street cleaner, you will always be able to have a small apartment all to yourself in the area where you work. So the homeless people here are not the people who do not have a chance to work, they are the people who have no wish to work at all. But in Russia with our cold winters it is really rather difficult to be a homeless, so maybe this is why we have less of them.
Let the church say, “Amen.”