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Pluto [he/him, he/him] @hexbear.net

Superstars or Black Holes: Are Tech Clusters Causing Stagnation? - American Affairs Journal (Pluto: An article about technology stagnation.)

The article argues that some federal government intervention earlier during WWII jump-started the tech innovations we saw from the 1950s to 1970s.

It also talks about how the Internet seems to be the only really new game-changing innovation since the 80s and seeks to explain why this is the case.

Among other things, of course, such as the nature of "tech clusters" such as Silicon Valley and Austin, Texas.

6 comments

  • Reminds me of David Graeber's Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit essay. The brain drain phenomenon is real. I was hoping the COVID remote work movement would reverse some of these trends, but it seems our oligarchy wants to prop up their pointless towers.

    • I'm hoping to be a digital nomad, tbh

    • Thank you for posting this, I work in tech and since my company got bought up by a bigger company there is no end to bureaucracy. All our work computers have multiple forms of spyware on them, I have to log in to various services (including redoing 2 factor) multiple times a day, the software we use is slow and barely works, and silliest of all, the crapware randomly blocks certain requests on port 8080 and no one in IT knows how to fix it because it is just a default set of security "best practice" rules, so we have to change ports for development. I feel his comments personally, despite never having to work on a grant proposal (although AFEs I have been told are similar) and relatively having it much easier.

      Its heartbreaking reading about the Soviet's plans for orbital solar panels as we do nothing about climate change instead, but I can at least use this info to have conversations with people.

      • crapware randomly blocks certain requests on port 8080 and no one in IT knows how to fix it because it is just a default set of security "best practice" rules

        I distinctly remember reading the Foundation novels and thinking that people, a whole civilization, couldn't just forget technology that quickly. No way! But reality is that it erodes constantly at the edges where the required knowledge only exists in one person's head. Combined with a corporate love affair with layoffs, there isn't a built-up institutional knowledge that is recorded and passed on. You can get away with ritual and a prayer, but eventually something breaks and nobody knows why.

        the software we use is slow and barely works

        I always laugh at what companies skimp on, compared to the labor costs lost to slow tech.

  • Today, the big tech clusters dominate U.S. patenting activity.

    seems implied that "number of patents" is a proxy for "innovation" rather than "rent seeking behavior"

    Inventors patent-holders are more likely to be male, come from well-off families, have parents who are inventors hold patents, are of relatively high cognitive ability (whether measured by standardized test scores or IQ tests) are good at these kinds of tests because they come from environments that value being good at these kinds of tests and so they receive extra early childhood training in taking these kinds of tests from their well-off families, and have high education levels.

    Given these demographics self-reinforcing mechanisms of socioeconomic stratification, it seems quite likely that the rise of standardized testing and meritocratically selective univer­sities probably played a key role in the ability of firms to identify the uppermost tier of innovative talent of multigenerational failchildren.

    i'm trying to fix the framing here but there's a lot to do

6 comments