| Also HN. I no longer have the right to upvote anything. I'm not allowed to more than five comments every three hours. My ranking for my comments is now penalized in a unique way: unlikely to ever be the top comment regardless of upvotes, but my comments are no longer pinned to the bottom, like they used to be. What does that have to do with this? Well... But like in so many other arenas, the Valley mentality hasn't adopted to the fact that they are no longer underdog rebels besieged by barbarians on one side and big scary rich corporations on the other site. The reality is now that these companies are the ruling class, and the users are the general population. And people rely on these services and base their lives on them. That's exactly how this feels. It's everywhere in Silicon Valley. And when you try to talk to them and point out that maybe this is unfair, it's like they don't even grok it. "Fairness? Morals?" It's about power. The power to control you and have you obey. You either have power or you don't. And unless you build something, you have no power at all. Those are uncomfortable conclusions. It pretty much defines what you have to do in life, for years, if you want to be in a position where anyone will listen. But that was always true – the world just makes it more obvious now. But... It's also exciting. We have the ability to acquire power. It's true that most of us won't acquire funding, which is what we really need to influence the world. But at no point in history has it been so easy (relatively speaking) for a side project to suddenly influence the world. If you were a farmer in the middle ages, you were boned. Ditto for most of the present world today. Isn't it weird? SV suddenly became the ruling class; you're exactly right. And no one has really been talking about the implications yet. |